


The System Dreams in Total Darkness

by tprung



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: The Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Five Year Mission, M/M, Post-Five Year Mission, Universe Alteration
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-08
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:02:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 108,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22167556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tprung/pseuds/tprung
Summary: ‘Sometimes, when I go back to my quarters I can hear you playing the lyre. It comes through the bulkhead just- a little louder than the engine, and all that's left is you and the music and me.’As the crew of the Enterprise celebrates their fifth and final Federation Day, an incident ignites a chain of events that irrevocably changes the course of their remaining time aboard. Kirk and Spock must fight the tide of time, brass and the powers that be in order to grasp how they will live and who they will become once they are no longer at the final frontier.
Relationships: James T. Kirk/Spock
Comments: 153
Kudos: 145





	1. Prologue

‘There was once a book, said to contain all the contents of the known and unknown universe. It was cast in a rock in the foothills of Shi'Kahr and above it grew a single tree. Unlike the rest of the Vulcan terrain, the tree was lush, its foliage rust-coloured, and its bark bone-white, visible from the edge of the city of Kir. Few who had passed that desolate plain had observed the tree and noted it as a curiosity, but no one had stopped. 

Eventually, the time came for a young boy to undertake the Kahs-wan and so to enter the Vulcan Forge he had to pass by the tree. On the morning he crossed the foothills the tree had reached an incomparable height, so tall it seemed to vanish into the heart of the sky. The boy took a pause and sensed something calling to him. At first, he thought it was the Katra of his ancestors, bound to the soil and rising again, but he could feel that what spoke to his mind had a different nature. He laid his palm flat against the trunk and in that moment a hot wind rose, and all the leaves sang above him, and branches called out, and the desert knew him, and he, it. Tired, and afraid of this sudden knowledge, he stepped back quickly and slipped, grazing his hands on the rock at the base of the tree. 

When he stood again, he inspected his injuries, green drops of his blood stood like mercury on the face of the rock. And they began to form a single line, like a vein that extended across the entire stone. It cracked and fell apart, and in the rubble, the book lay open. He cleared the debris from the pages so that he could read them, and found on those pages two lines: _This is the nothing. It once contained everything._

Without turning a page, he shut the book and reconstructed the rocks over and around it. He then stared to the west, where The Forge glimmered, the sand shining into his eyes and scorched red. He looked back at the bark, and he looked at his grazed palms. He stepped up once again and reached for the lowest branch and pulled himself up toward the unseen, and as he climbed, the heat grew less, and he became something else entirely. One with the rushing air, the sounds of the leaves and the branches were now his voice, and the roots of the tree were his limbs, and he climbed without ever reaching the top, free in the act itself. 

Shed from its protective stone, and unnoticed by the rare few passersby, the book said to contain all the contents of the known and unknown universe, decayed. Its pages turned to dust and blew across the sand, mixing into the foothills and The Forge. And its only remaining certainty, now wordless, was: _This is the nothing. It once contained everything.’_

‘And…and would it have worked? If he had had red blood, I mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you see the tree when you went to The Forge?’

‘Yes.’

‘And…heard the boy?’

‘And heard the boy.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Kahs-wan**
> 
> The kahs-wan, or Vulcan maturity test, was a traditional survival test of adulthood for adolescent Vulcans. The basis for the kahs-wan was to survive ten days without food, water, or weapons in Vulcan's Forge.
> 
> **Katra**
> 
> Described as a Vulcan's eternal life force, likened to their soul.


	2. Low Iowa Skies

_ This life on board is sure to kill me.  
Fever rages in my head day and night.  
And although I search until I’m ill,  
I can’t find the spring to set me right _

— **Álvaro De Campos, Opiary**

* * *

‘I’m sorry about your father, Jim.’

‘Thank you,’ he would be surprised she knew if he weren’t so tired and if he wasn’t run into the ground. He couldn’t find anything else to say to her.

‘I called about something else too,’ she said after a time, ‘If you’d like I can call back another time, I know Federation Day is busy for your lot if you have—’

‘No, now’s fine,’ he arranged his face into a tight smile. ‘What is it?’

‘Well, it’s not a normal request.’

‘Is David ok?’ 

Her eyes tightened across years and years of light, too late he realised he’d broken a cardinal rule. At the time her phrasing had been, _I don’t want you so much as saying his name, let alone see him_. Over time, his son’s name had become like any other name, and the rule seemed moot. But the two syllables exploded somewhere between them. 

‘He’s fine,’ she said, ‘Actually, I’m taking him with me while I do some research on an outpost for about three months.’

_And whatever happened to not traipsing around space?_

He swallowed that, he nodded, okay, alright. 

‘A couple of days ago we went to a Doctor for the standard check-ups for the travel,’ she went on, adjusting her hands on the table in front of her, ‘And you’re a complete genetic match for him.’

A solid block of silence came, and he stared into the pixels that made her startling blue eyes. A ghost of music punched into his quarter’s bulkhead from one of the rec rooms, voices behind the door, singing and calling and swimming. He looked down at his arms crossed over his chest, braids twisted and folded tightly

‘You need my bio-samples in case there’s an accident on the outpost,’ he said quietly. ‘And...he’s only seven.’

‘And I’m his mother,’ she said firmly, only to loosen, tide coming in and going out, ‘I know it’s not the time to ask, considering everything.’

‘I appreciate your attempt at sensitivity,’ he rubbed his jaw, he preferred her defensive anger to the pity party. ‘I’ll go to Bones, he’ll expedite it. You can send details to his comm-link.’ 

‘Jim, I didn’t mean to bring it up tonight, really,’ she said, business-like to the last, extending a diplomatic hand. He gave up asking to speak to David one year into his Enterprise commission. He wouldn’t go back to Earth and she wouldn’t accept five years, or smartly, the incalculable risk of launching yourself into the unknown with nothing but a starship and crew of four-hundred. And enough crew had been lost to make it the sensible choice. 

She was right, he shouldn’t have said his name. 

‘You know, Dad always liked you,’ Kirk finally said, blinking. ‘He told me I should’ve stayed.’

‘He knew what being a Captain took,’ she said, she exhaled and some of her coldness fled, ‘You think he was trying to tell you he would do it differently if he could?’

‘He made the best choice with what he had,’ he said, frowning, then a laugh escaped him, ‘Maybe he meant that I wasn’t cut out for it.’

‘I doubt that,’ she said. ‘I don’t think there’s much you’re better at than being a Captain. Being out there. And I don’t mean it as a slight, Jim. I’m a scientist, but someone like you makes things like destiny sound almost plausible.’

‘Anything else?’

‘No,’ she said, ‘Thank you.’

‘Anytime,’ he paused before saying goodbye, ‘You know if he ever needs anything—‘

‘Jim.’

‘Alright, Carol,’ he said, ‘Goodbye.’

‘Bye, Jim. Happy Federation day.’

He didn’t have enough left in him to say it back. He disconnected, leaning into his seat and pressing his thumbs into his eyes so hard the blackness tore through and neon ringlets burst and geometry sizzled into existence. He wanted to sleep, but he knew it wouldn’t be possible with the noise and clamour, with the crew’s pulse in one rhythm and the clashing, thrumming beats. And his father not buried a day, and his mother most likely sitting at the table in kitchen drinking tea, staring into the fire alone. Sam and Aurelean gone, Peter across the galaxy. And he himself, the wayward, inconsistent son; the invisible father; nobody’s anybody.

In a moment he decided he preferred his own anger to this pity party too. Anything but the devolving mess he was treading into, he opened a channel to the bridge, ‘Kirk here.’

‘Brochard responding, Happy Federation day, Captain.’

‘Thank you, Lieutenant,’ Kirk said, ‘I’m calling to relieve you from your post, I’ll be up shortly.’

‘Is something wrong, Sir?’

‘Not at all, I just have some business to take care of.’

‘Certainly, standing-by sir.’

‘Good, Kirk out.’

He stood and stared around the room as though seeing it again for the first time, suitcases at his feet. A new beat started to the left of his quarters, and the rhythm looped in sonic curves distinctive to Orion, and the cheers soared.

Coasting on a foam of muddled thoughts, he took a shower and changed into a fresh set of golds. It was an old Captain’s trick George Kirk had recommended, if you don’t feel like you’re the guy in charge, at least look like the guy in charge. _Up to scratch._ He stared at himself in the mirror, face partially visible through the condensation. He pushed the hair back from his forehead, straightened up and tugged at the hem of his shirt.

Outside the sounds bloomed to discernible words, songs he could recognise snatches from through open doors. The crew passing called out greetings to him, a little drunk and smiling, bursting with enthusiasm. He was struck by how young they suddenly seemed in their civilian clothes and Federation Day junk-jewellery, holding onto each other by collars and sleeves and hands. 

At the end of the corridor he was faced with an open turbo-lift, Uhura standing alone, red flowers sewn in intricate patterns on her jumpsuit, and humming an undiscernible tune in the din. When she saw him she gave him a brilliant smile, and Kirk helplessly returned it. She held out an arm and stalled the door for him. He slipped in and thanked her. 

‘Captain, I thought you had already beamed down,’ she said when the doors closed, turning to him, ‘Dr McCoy had a convincing pitch for Relva VII.’

Kirk chuckled as he adjusted the lever, ‘Quite the salesman, isn’t he? Deck?’ 

‘Four, please,’ she said, ‘He is, especially when it comes to a good time.’ 

‘Dr L. Horatio McCoy’s good-time miracle tonics are infamous.’

‘And a recipe for trouble,’ Uhura laughed, hitching a hand on her hip, ‘Any other plans?’

‘None,’ Kirk smiled, the year before had been nice, the planet hadn’t had any of Starfleet’s hedonistic trappings, just gardens upon gardens and sentient life yet to be made. All night, a thirty-five hour night, he’d spent drinking whiskey in the grass, listening to crewmen murmuring as they picnicked in the field, McCoy singing southern blues and Spock silent and serene, drinking for the warmth through doubtful sips. He wanted that, and Relva VII was by-and-large a pass-through starbase, and a cadet's base, with bars, restaurants, experimental arts and clubs to fit the demographic looking for curiosities, for short-stays and expulsions of energy. 

He cleared his throat, ‘I promised myself I’d skip this one. The benefits of the tonic are still unproven.’

‘Well, I certainly know one,’ she nudged his arm, ‘there’s a karaoke competition in rec room two.’

‘I doubt alcohol could do me any favours,’ he said, ‘not if you’re competing anyway.’

‘Second place is nothing to turn your nose up at,’ she laughed, ‘Sir.’

The lift halted, ‘Don’t bank on it, Lieutenant.’

‘Happy Federation Day, Sir,’ she said before stepping out.

‘Happy Federation Day.’

* * *

‘Captain,’ Brochard turned partway in the chair. He stood to attention and brought the PADD by the lift doors, ‘everything is functioning regularly, we have not received any communications since the shift started, and security is overseeing the general upkeep of the rec rooms.’

‘Good, good,’ Kirk took the PADD and pressed a thumb into his shift assignment window, re-logging over Brochard’s session. ‘Any subspace chatter to worry about.’

‘None,’ the Lieutenant said, suppressing a yawn, ‘Sorry, Sir.’

‘Tired?’ Kirk smiled as he returned his attention to the PADD and skimmed the notes. 

‘A little, yes,’ he said slightly sheepishly. He was maybe twenty-five, he’d been promoted from ensign quite early, but he was diligent and volunteered to be on the skeleton crews often. Kirk could see in him what he’d been fifteen years ago, hungry to conn, to look over the bridge and see the stars coming. 

‘Well, that’s all, thank you,’ Kirk said, ‘now go rest, or go drink.’

Brochard thanked him with a grin, in spite of his watering eyes. Kirk heard the lift open for him as he continued to scan shift details. He began checking off the Bridge roster when he saw Spock’s name. His head shot up, and around; Spock was often on skeleton crews, but it was rare that Kirk had missed him when he entered. Pavao was at the communications console diligently skimming subspace chatter, the navigator, Eloise Nevin was manning both panels, mostly idle over a personal PADD and replenishing engine controls, accounting for power shifts. The bridge was otherwise empty and Spock, he guessed, had stepped out briefly. The skeleton crew each in their own worlds made Kirk feel less desolate than all the world that seemed to be merry-making and singing outside. 

When the lift came back up, Kirk turned and watched it, doors parting to Spock standing a little hunched with an object in one hand, studying it intently and pressing it with his index finger wherein it emitted something like a croak. As he came out and looked up he paused, surprise registering for a nano-second, then in a blink. He inclined his head in greeting.

‘Mr Spock, I’d typically say fancy running into you here.’

‘Indeed,’ Spock answered, stepping down by the command chair. He gathered closer, ‘I briefly left to look for you.’

Kirk swallowed; he must know already too, no doubt Starfleet had published a far-reaching obituary. He didn't want to hear any remorse from Spock, not an _I am sorry_ or an expression of likened grief nor that George Kirk was a such-and-such Captain.  Spock dropped his gaze and folded his hands along with the object behind his back. 

‘May I help in any way?’ he asked sombrely, voice shucking from the depth of his chest. When he looked at him again Spock’s dark eyes were warm and unwavering. 

‘Were you planning on leaving the bridge?’ Kirk asked quickly before he swallowed the words. 

‘No,’ Spock said, ‘that was not my intention.’

‘Then, nothing,’ he smiled softly, ‘Thank you, Spock.’

He nodded and let his hands drop from their bind, shoulders relaxing. The gadget snagged Kirk’s attention, its streamlined design and insect-like dimensions were novel if benign. 

He cleared his throat, ’What’s that?’ 

‘This,’ Spock bore it between a thumb and forefinger and stepped back to allow a better view, ‘is a spy device, Klingon and quite defunct.’

'And what’s it doing here?’

‘It was an oddity that Engineer Scott came across some time ago, he attempted to resolve its machinery but eventually lost interest,’ Spock said, ‘I have taken up the task of studying it as a matter of personal curiosity.’

‘May I?’ Kirk held out a hand for it. It was a smooth, round device, a little dinged up from its adventures, no larger than a hockey puck and chrome, though Kirk suspected it had chameleon capabilities. Along its sides, there were two thin seams too narrow for anything to come in or out. Likely it would unfold when called into action and otherwise remain entirely impenetrable. ‘Do you know much about it yet?’ 

‘No, however, I believe I’m close,’ Spock took it back and turned the device on its oblong side, tracing the lines to demonstrate, ‘there are micro-screws embedded inside these fissures, it will be a matter of calibrating the correct driver. This mystery will make a full circle to its origins, Mr Scott is the sole possessor of the Swiss-Army micro-calibration screws.’

‘But you could, of course, craft your own…’

‘Undoubtedly,’ Spock’s eyebrow shot up, ‘though it would be inefficient when one already exists.’

‘And I suppose presently Scotty is Starbase-side,’ Kirk said, ‘celebrating.’ 

Yeoman Rand entered before Spock could answer and offered a tray. She greeted them both as Kirk took the cup, he thanked her and smiled at Spock who had returned to examining the item, hands nimbly and strategically testing it for stress-points. He let the taste of synthesised coffee sit with him. The heat of coffee like the warmth of whiskey, both bitter at different points on his palate. 

Spock’s panel chirped across the Bridge and when he left the moment vacated too. Kirk refocused on the PADD. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> vvlcant.tumblr.com


	3. Flotsam and Jetsam

For the next hour, he filed clerical work. There had been medical workups for the whole crew to approve, a series of confidential Starfleet HQ briefings with smatterings of redacted lines that went beyond his clearance level — things for the desk-jockeys on Earth to worry about and form orders on. Without the keywords, they were incomprehensible required reading, and the legality meant that if in sixth months an admiral mentioned the piece, he would technically be aware of it. In general, his understanding was that it often involved trade entanglements between the Federation member planets and the independent merchants who relied on venture capitalism to make a living on their worlds, working on the fringes of the Federation and grazing by the protocols. Specific units were just for transporting curiosities, and spare ship parts per Starfleet's commission. Could be anything from food from lightyears away to less than savoury things like tribbles. And still, tribbles were the least of anyone’s worries.

The rest of what he tackled was bureaucratic fodder that came with the territory of rank. The more braids, the more bureaucracy and barefaced so-called diplomatic ventures were required, inauguration ceremonies, funerals, marches and fan-fare and pomp and hand-shaking and turning cartwheels to appease the next person up. 

He looked up, eyes swimming around the main-view, the starbase station and its control were grey blurs and a stream of small lights while his sight adjusted. He glanced up at Spock reflexively, bent toward his viewer and eyes immersed by the blue light of the scanner. 

Spock turned back, catching him off-guard.

‘Captain,’ he looked back into his scanner, ‘there is an incoming debris storm, seven parsecs per second, and at high volume.’

There was nothing visible on the viewer yet. Everyone had snapped to attention, hands bursting in sudden activity over their panels to recover more information. 

‘Assess threat to the starbase.’

‘Imminent collision with the control station in 2.4 minutes.’

‘Captain we just received confirmation from Relva,’ Pavao called. 

Adrenaline punched out in his throat. He put in a yellow alert and called into the transportation room, aborting all activity.

‘Open ship-wide transmission, Pavao,’ he said over his shoulder. 

‘Switched in, Sir.’

He pressed the button on his side-panel, ‘Attention crew, attention — a yellow alert is now in place. There is an incoming debris storm. All off-duty personnel return to your quarters if you are unfit for duty, anyone who is prepared, report to sickbay for a sign-off to return to your posts. I repeat, if you are unfit for duty in any way return to your quarters and brace for potential impact.’

‘All transporter activity has been sealed off.'

‘Nevin, on tactical panel - shields up,’ Kirk said. 

‘Debris angle to starbase meantime, eighty-four degrees,’ Spock reported, ‘planet is now in the direct course of the projectile stream.’

Kirk stepped up to the helm, pushing on impulse power to turn the ship starboard to face the trajectory of the incoming storm. 

‘Pavao, tell them to brace for impact,’ Kirk called, his hands flying over the controls and eyes swilling through the information lighting up on the helm panels. He added five percent to the right impulse thruster. The main view swung around them, and the control station came into full view, hanging over a visible slice of the starbase. From this angle, the circular window panes and docked shuttles on its head were visible like train-set miniatures, the whole of the shape reminiscent of an upside-down spinning top, a fifth of the size of the Enterprise. 

‘Shields engaging, Sir,’ Nevin said, ‘thirty seconds to completion.’

‘Twenty seconds to collision with starbase's control station,’ Spock said, ‘forty-two seconds to the Enterprise.’

He reversed the thrusters and switched back in time to see the collision on a steady main-view. Space junk made up of shorn metal cartwheeled in, it seemed like nothing but a crumbled pieces of paper by momentum in the increasing gravity of the starbase. Too large to burn up before making contact with the control, and too large for the starbase to withstand without its shields. 

‘Brace for secondary collision,’ Kirk called, grabbing the edges of the panel, heart hitting ribs hard until the screaming yellow alert phased into the background. He turned back two steps and pushed red alert on his seat before returning to the helm and bracing himself, white-knuckled and teeth grit. 

‘Shields engaged, Sir.’

The world went red. The bridge, a flickering mirage. In the shuttering mess, Kirk saw the first piece of debris tear into the closest edge of the station and tear out within a second. It dragged out metal entrails, a mess of insulation and life support systems which immediately became ants in a honeypot, frozen in time. The next largest piece swung into the top like a discus, and the fuel comport tore cleanout, an explosion bloomed, blinding them. 

Before he could regain his senses the Enterprise was belted in a one-two, the explosion hitting out in waves and the debris hurtling into their side, the momentum of the turned Enterprise jarring at the collision two-fold. Kirk lurched off his feet into the edge of the helm panel. A smooth metal edge slammed into him, trapping his arm between his weight and the unyielding console, the midpoint of his forearm giving under pressure. With the bone clean in two his arm hung uselessly and painlessly in whitened heat of shock in his system, he rag-dolled onto the ground and lay with his cheek against the cold titanium plastic composite of the floor. For a few eternal seconds, his eyes rolled shut of their own volition, sounds smearing into one siren before a low whistle cut through the centre of him. As he was, the following aftershock of impact from smaller pieces ran tremors into the Enterprise, electrifying forces of motion that went as waves into him and ended in him as crashing, dead-walled waves. He couldn’t breathe, eyes snapping open in defence of his bottomed-out senses. Over his prone hand, he could see the red light shifting the bridge, burning it in hues beyond reconciliation. There was no one else in immediate sight. A sea welled up around him, over his ears, and he felt his smallness, really felt it to the last fibre of his body. 

A pair of hands reached out and pulled him from the rocking currents, strong and imminent and urgent. Kirk pushed up with their help, gaining his feet as he caught his breath he saw Spock, eyes grave and face ashen and nose bleeding clean over his mouth and down his chin, viridian green so dark it was nearly black, chest heaving near Kirk’s own, hand clutched into his side. 

Spock said his name, but only the low-pitched whistle remained in his ears. He stared at his mouth forming the sound again, and a realisation that he knew the precise shape of Spock’s lips and the angling of his teeth and the set of his jaw and had memorised it some time ago, unconsciously, anchored him to reality. 

‘—m alright,’ his voice finally dropped from his mouth to his ears. ‘I’m fine.’

He stepped back from Spock, and his hands released his arms. Back on the helm, he leaned over the panel to check the stats, his left arm seared through the constant upstream rush of blood and nearly fell onto it again. He pulled it by his side at the last second. Beside him Nevin had clung onto the console, in the commotion, the on-duty engineer had clambered onto the Bridge from the engine room. He glanced over his shoulder and found Pavao’s form slumped on the ground. 

He knew without asking the station shields had not been completed in time. That they had delayed in favour of setting up the planetary shields, and the risk of those thirty or forty seconds had been enough to destroy them.He turned and looked into Spock’s face, and Spock looked back into his and in the micro-emotions, the movements and feelings that Kirk had come to fathom in the last four years he saw that the consensus of failure lay between them. And it made his heart sink to the well of his abdomen, and further until it had sapped the last of his energy. 

‘Contact control,’ he said rawly, hanging onto the edge of the panel as the smaller tremors came. Spock hurried back over, stepping past Pavao and clawing at her station, punching in the frequency.

Kirk hit the opened a channel to the sickbay, ‘unconscious crewman on the bridge, report. We need immediate assistance. Kirk out.’

‘On our way, Captain,’ Chapel answered, voice steeled.

He looked up to the main view. At the edge of the screen, he could see the shredded remnants. 

‘Magnify 50%, control station coordinates,’ he glanced at Nevin.

She complied and he could see in better detail what was left of the control station. Entanglements of wires and intricate networks were netting loose, smaller pieces of debris and the rest of the station had been gutted like a carcass. A flicker of his time hunting in Iowa as a boy emerged in front of him, rabbits twitching into the brush, hanging on the end of Sam’s carrier. Tradition, they’d called it, and rabbits had once been pests. On the cut edge of the station, two or three lights were still blinking, red, yellow, red, red, red. Three, four, five bodies, small and lightless four-point stars of people that had been manning the station drifted in the diffuse. He stared down over the panel unseeing. 

‘Control is unresponsive, Captain,’ Spock said.

He changed the main view to face ahead, then began turning the ship quarter port to face the trajectory the debris had come from, ’keep trying Mr Spock, beam aboard any survivors.’

‘With the atmosphere interference, it’s not possible to do so safely,’ he said. ‘We cannot help them and help the starbase at the same time.’

Kirk gripped the edge of the panel, and he held a noise in his throat, guttural and endless. The Enterprise had completed its rotation, now facing outward at incoming debris. 

‘Shield status?’

‘Eighty-six percent, draining inconsistently with incoming impacts,’ Nevin answered.

Dimly he heard Spock returning to the science panel behind him, ‘second bout of larger debris approaching Captain.’ 

‘What?’ Kirk asked, turning to Spock, who turned back at the science station. 

‘I don’t have further information,’ Spock said, ‘I…estimate it will match the velocity and approximate size of the first bout.’

‘Starbase shields percentage?’

‘None that we can detect, the control station did not have enough time to complete shields.’

‘Alright,’ Kirk said and tried to centre himself. He took a searing breath, ‘Nevin, charge phaser power to ninety percent, hold fire.’

‘Thirty-three seconds to collision,’ Nevin said.

’Captain, the phaser stores are draining our shields every minute we hold them,’ the shift engineer finally spoke up from behind him. _Lieutenant Alameda_ , Kirk's brain provided from habit. 

‘Hold them,’ he said,’Time to collision, start a verbal countdown, Mr Spock.’

‘Twenty-seven, twenty-six, twenty-five…’

He looked back down at the helm’s screen, he could see the trajectory of the approaching pieces, more than could be countable in one look. He pulled up a calculation panel and coordinated the details while Spock kept count.

‘Engine power reduced by three percent,’ Alameda called out from his left. 

Kirk realised that with so little time and resources the only way to protect the starbase was to break the debris to pieces that were digestible by what little atmosphere there was. He thought of bodies and he thought of all the other bodies on the starbase, Enterprise crew and friends among them. 

‘Eighteen.’

‘On sixteen, Nevin,’ he confirmed the calculation on his screen. She nodded tensely, hand poised over her screen. When Spock said the word her hand fell. A red jet fired. There was an explosion, pieces bursting like shotgun shells and changing direction. Some parts were ground into fine dust and showered the Enterprise. She shuddered in answer. 

‘Keep track of pieces capable of penetrating the starbase atmosphere.’

‘Sir, shields have just plunged — fifty-two percent,’ Alameda called, ‘we can’t keep up both fronts and take the hits from the other debris.’

‘Not long now,’ Kirk said without knowing the numbers. With hope, maybe or some semblance of delusion. Spock called out the next threat and again he coordinated, again counted down, ‘where is it coming from?’

‘The debris is materialising little over a parsec at a time, from various directions but with the same trajectory, varying speed.’

Nevin fired. The brightness of the screen swallowed them, he squinted in the light and in the respite of blindness and deafness over the circulating tones of the bridge he had a moment to feel the pain in his arm, shooting through him with what he imagined was timed to the blinking red station lights, shredded nerve-endings and stretching ligament and shattered bone conspiring. The screen cleared then other pieces came, the Enterprise caught in the onslaught of alloy, hardware. Objects, heavy and sharp, with vast momentum, speeding in a direct line of action. 

‘Shields at forty-one percent,’ the engineer’s voice shook when he delivered the message.

‘I need more,’ Kirk called.

‘We can’t compensate for phaser power, Sir,’ he said, ‘it’s one or the other.’

He bit his tongue, ‘hold both for now. Next collision, Spock?’

‘One minute and thirty-four seconds.’

‘The phaser bank is not holding full charge,’ Nevin said, shaking her head, eyes flitting, ’We’re using too much too quickly.’

‘Charge what’s left, divert five percent.’

There was a pause, and he turned to Nevin. Her dark eyes were wide, lips pressed hard, ‘Lieutenant,’ he prompted her. ‘Now.’

She followed through and as he began the next sequence calculation he realised it would be last pushback they could afford before losing power too, leaving only the Enterprise, bodily, against whatever projectiles were to come. The Enterprise and some of her crew. Kirk tried to balance the decision, reminded of the Kobayashi Maru; lose the Enterprise or let the starbase be hit. He swallowed hard, he looked up. Spock started counting again. 

‘On thirteen,’ he said, accounting for the mass, the speed of the projectile, the distance of the Enterprise and the power they had left. 

Nevin fired, the Enterprise trembled with the force of the surrounding projectiles, what was blasted before hitting the nose of the ship and the underside.

‘How much more Spock?’ he said.

Spock stepped down beside the helm, ’within the foreseeable reach. Two mid-sized projectiles.’

Kirk looked at him, eyes wide body electric with his pulse, with his fear, and now with Spock’s proximity. The Commander wouldn’t leave his post for no reason, no reason other than to be close, a clear understanding that this was their last point of conscious choice before there came whatever would. 

‘One last charge, Lieutenant,’ he said in a near hush. All around them the silence resounded starkly expect for the now backgrounded alert peals.

‘Yes, Sir.'

Kirk calculated the trajectory and said, on my word, and watched the screen, counting in his head. 

‘NOW.’

The phaser went off. Behind him the engineer made a small sound, the ship’s shoulder whipped back on one side and Kirk held the console and Spock held the edge of the chair behind him. 

‘Shields at two—one percent, depleted.’

‘Wh—’ Kirk tried to catch his breath, he turned back to Spock, ‘what was the meantime angle, Spock?’

‘Eighty-four point three, two degrees,’ Spock hesitated if for a fraction of a second, and his voice dipped very gently to the end of his words.

‘Thank you,’ Kirk tried to push everything he meant into it, to bend the words to his purpose. Thank you for…yet he couldn’t even emerge from that and all his mind grappled. He directed the Enterprise lower, lower under it matched the direct line of the storm and the brunt of projectiles. And all there remained to do was wait. He turned from the helm and stepped past Spock. 

‘Take the helm, Spock,’ he said firmly, ‘hold our position.’

Spock sat down and faced ahead without a word. 

A grey mass came spinning out of the black nothing, obscuring the few stars. Smaller pieces, though he couldn’t measure them his eyes. Ten, nine, eight, numbers swam. He looked at the back of Spock’s head and Spock did not look at the helm panel ticking over, he stared ahead. Again Kirk was reminded that at this moment he had few regrets and that maybe they were sacrificial coins he’d been throwing into a Vulcanian fountain, at his depth. He gripped the panel and pressed the button. 

‘Brace for impact.’

The screen jerked to the left and the moment punctured Kirk back into his seat. Darkness swallowed them, instruments going off, the world turned over. He started to losing contact with the seat, peeling away, his back drifting and his boots dropping off. It was colder, and he knew without knowing that in the utter belly of darkness they would lose air soon. When he was clear of the surfaces in zero gravity, the ship moved around him, and he remained spinning slowly from inertia.

Then eternity ended. Overhead lights snapped onto dim power, and he was sucked into the ground with force, landing on his broken side and relieved by the flood of pain. This time he pulled himself off the ground and staggered to the edge of the seat. 

‘Engineer, report?’ he said. The ground was still, and he didn't trust it.

‘Auxiliary power has held Captain,’ he said, panting, ’ significant damage to deck 1.’

‘Shuttlecraft deck,’ Kirk said, looking back at him.

‘And part of the engine room,’ Alameda added. 

Spock was pressed over the helm seat, ‘no more projectiles in view, we’ve been rotated thirty-nine degrees starboard by the latest impact.’

‘Correct course, Spock.’

The turbo-lift doors slipped open and two medicals in blue uniforms emerged, Kirk looked at Pavao prone on the ground and they followed his sight and began to unfold a stretcher for her.

‘Still nothing?’ Kirk asked.

‘For now,’ Spock answered. ‘Course corrected.’ 

Now the proof was in their eyes and the emptiness of space remained, the stars seemed innocent and decorative. Kirk heard Nevin take a deep, halting breath of relief and release a small incredulous laugh. 

‘You did well, Lieutenant,’ he said.

‘Thank you, Captain.’ 

‘Take over the helm for Commander Spock,’ he said, ‘I’ll put out a call for someone to relieve you soon. Keep monitoring for any more signs of debris.’

Spock got out of the seat and returned to the communications console. The control station, the possibility of survivors flooded to Kirk’s mind. He followed on his heels calling Alameda as he did, ‘re-power the transporter, stand by to beam up survivors from the control station.’

‘Yes, Captain.’

Kirk leaned over the console beside Spock as he worked, switching open a range of frequencies. The back of his right hand was smeared with blood he had wiped from his nose, smudged dry. He put in the ear-set and Kirk watched him listening, adjusting controls and listening again.

A couple of minutes passed, the pain in Kirk’s arm growing, gritting his teeth to abate and ignore it. 

Spock finally looked up,  ‘They are unresponsive.'

He swallowed the nerves, a frustrating tangle of muck now plugging the base of his throat. ‘Alright, Spock,’ was all he could manage, putting a hand on his shoulder momentarily to regain balance and straighten up. The bridge started to pulse around him, as he blinked to clear it he felt a warm line cut over his mouth, then another. 

He brought up a hand and withdrew it covered with blood. Kirk stared in confusion, the viscous red, spreading it between forefinger and thumb like a detective. He could taste it in the back of his throat; he could see it with his pulse in washes of red across his vision. 

‘Jim,’ Spock stood up, clasping his arms and guiding him to sit in the communications chair. Kirk leaned back and felt he’d broken into the velveteen otherworld, all of it soft and made for him, and sightless and soundless and larger than the human bodies outside, inside. Spock knelt in front of him, brought a hand to the side of his head, holding his world steady. The last echoes he sensed were the vibrations of Spock’s voice. And the dry warmth of his palm, shaking a little. 


	4. Carol of Occupations

The doors to his quarters slid opened with a hiss and McCoy stood where Kirk had expected an empty hallway.

‘Escaping?’ McCoy asked, eyebrows tilting. He hoisted up a tray with a plate of synthesised high-energy protein blocks, a hypo and a large cup of water. 

‘If you don’t mind,’ Kirk said, stepping aside to let him in. 

When McCoy entered Kirk slid out, just over the threshold to his room. The Doctor was unamused, ‘need I remind you I got a job to do here too?’ 

‘Why Bones, that _has_ occurred to me on occasion,’ he said, scanning the corridor, left then right. 

‘Jim, I let you out of sickbay on good faith,’ McCoy shook his head, moving the tray up and down with his words, no doubt with the urge to garnish them with the appropriate amount of chagrin. The water swilled dangerously close to spilling.

‘I’m grateful for the house call,’ Kirk said, turning to him, ‘but it was just a broken arm.’

‘Snapped clean!’ his face became a discriminant shade of red, ‘Ulna, radius - clean through. Eight and seventh ribs— if this were a hundred years ago, you might be dead.’

‘I can’t speak to medical miracles, Bones,’ Kirk started walking, left on a whim. He needed to move. Nervous energy was crawling under his skin with a mind of its own, over-running any pain. He’d been in his quarters for barely an hour, ripping through reports of the debris storm briefing for HQ, compiling logs. For the first time in two years, he had little more than a scrap of paperwork left to his name. The ship needed repairs, replacement components, at least twenty-five crew members were out of action from injuries sustained during the incident. All that and they still hadn't pinpointed the source of the debris, no explanation for its speed, size, frequency. It had come thrashing out of a void if only to destroy them. These things happened, but not like this. 

McCoy fell into step with him, and the door slid shut behind them, this late the corridors were empty except for the straggling maintenance crew. He could help but feel a constant inkling that he should be on the bridge, possibly at all times, precluding the need to eat or sleep. If Kirk had started the shift out on the bridge, he might have seen something, picked up a thread. And still, McCoy was likely to bludgeon him into a concussive state if he attempted to go to the bridge. 

‘Well, where’s this merry stroll taking us?’ McCoy said gruffly, looking down at the tray, ‘I can’t carry this thing all over the ship like a mother hen, Jim.’

‘Been a while since I heard that one,’ Kirk chuckled. He felt the brisk stride turning lead in his legs, and there was this gnawing feeling of not being all there. An eighth of him knocked out sideways, some phantom limb or other. He could feel the twinge in his arm that had started as a clanging, electrifying pain, and he held it closer to his side, swinging less and slowing in counterbalance. He nodded to a passing ensign. 

‘I’m glad I could be amusing,’ he said drily, ‘now kindly redirect yourself toward sickbay.’

Kirk stopped short of the lift doors, ‘you already discharged me, professionally speaking — you can’t readmit me now.’

‘I can and I might,’ he said, ‘But that’s not what I meant.’

McCoy glanced around the corridor furtively and waited for a midshipman to pass before continuing, ‘I received Carol Marcus’ message. You got some free time now, might as well come down and let me take the bio-samples. Maybe have something to eat and drink while you’re at it too.’ 

In the aftermath of the incident, of waking up with his throat dry and an ongoing recollection of dead bodies floating through the control station, the viscera of metal and man merged to one in a vacuum he’d forgotten everything else. And so it continued. He nodded, leading McCoy into the lift. 

As they rode up the tension mounted, the unspoken multitude of things Kirk would typically ask for advice on laying in the silence. Under the mound of Kirk’s exhaustion, McCoy, no doubt waiting for his chance. 

‘Look, Jim—‘

‘It’s fine, Bones,’ he said tightly. ‘I’m fine too, for the record.’

‘I’m not asking for the record,’ he said, ‘Not asking as your Doctor either — I’m sorry about your father, Jim.’

He looked at the shut doors, the light switching through the levels panel, his grip tightened on the lever. He glanced at McCoy with an inclination of a smile, ‘Thank you.’

When the doors opened, he emerged from a body of monstrous water — something he had yet to define in any way. And though things lightened, the mood must have shifted determinately in the direction of his reluctance to engage, because McCoy didn’t speak again until they entered the sickbay. He overtook him and put the tray on his desk, before holding out an arm for him to enter. 

As Kirk followed the indication, McCoy spoke, ‘You don't want to be doctored, but if you drop dead after a couple of days from mild-enough injuries the first door they’ll come knocking on is mine.’

Kirk grinned at him, squinting to see through his facade as they walked, ‘you’re almost as good as Spock at pretending like you do your work just because of brass responsibility.’

McCoy stopped a little short of dead by the first bed, ‘Spock.’

‘Spock?’ Kirk frowned, following his eyes. 

The Vulcan stood in the middle of the room, carrying an innocuous package under one arm while Nurse Chapel stood beside him, PADD aloft and a juggling a few tapes in her other hand. She looked between the three of them. 

Kirk bit the inside of his cheek, ‘Spock,’ he said again, prompting himself to the reality. He thought about what he had said. He hadn’t said anything impertinent. No, but faced with Spock, he suddenly wasn’t sure what he’d _meant_ either. Spock stared at him for a long moment, dark eyes searching his face before he spared McCoy a look. Then back again. 

There were a few beats in which Kirk’s mind threw up white noise, and everyone shuffled to accommodate the scene. 

‘Well, we work on a starship, I should hope we _all_ enjoy our work,’ Chapel said, clearing her throat. ‘And luckily we’ll keep at it — Mr Spock’s completely recovered from his injuries.’

McCoy opened and shut his mouth, blinking rapidly, ‘excellent, you can leave the reports on my desk.’

‘Yes, Sir,’ Chapel handed him the PADD and stepped out, ‘Mr Spock, Captain.’

Kirk nodded, trying to regain his footing. Everyone else seemed to have recovered well enough, except for him. 

‘Well, Spock,’ McCoy took a cursory look at the PADD, ‘You’re cleared for the bridge too. Perfect bill of health.’

‘Thank you, Doctor,’ he said. ‘And the Captain?’

He heaved a short breath and buried himself in the best smile he could manage, to radiate calm and steadiness, plotting in the back of his mind the first possible opportunity to speak to Spock alone and clarify what he had meant. Of course, that would involve recognising what he’d been saying precisely, and that was some ways off.

‘I should be back in action tomorrow,’ he said finally.

Spock nodded, ‘That is good to hear. I believed you would take an extended medical leave.’

‘No, though Bones would dearly love to readmit me,’ Kirk added, nodding toward the Doctor.

‘Oh no, I certainly don’t,’ McCoy rolled his eyes, moving to the wall and sliding open a cabinet, ‘Out of four-hundred crew members there are no two pills bigger than the pair of you to treat.’

‘Doctor, has it occurred to you that we simply don’t respond to your form of bedside manners?’

‘I have perfect bedside manners,’ he straightened up, clutching a bio-sample packet. ‘You just don’t know how to appreciate them.’

Kirk chuckled at the explosion of irony, the rhythms settling. He side-saddled a bio-bed and rolled up his sleeve, ‘Did you have something to discuss, Spock?’

‘Nothing emergent,’ he said, switching the package from one hand to the other. It was a rectangular block, covered in plain green wrapping. 

‘Well, might as well tell me now, we’re going to be up to our necks in repairs for a while,’ Kirk said, frowning to himself at the thought of the damage the Enterprise had sustained. HQ’s fire was already down his neck for the extreme circumstances, at once full of praise for his quick thinking and disdain for the Enterprise's inability to identify where the debris had come from and if it could occur again. 

‘If you need privacy, I can return later,’ Spock said.

‘No,’ Kirk sighed, he shook his head, ‘It’s a long story, but I need to send some bio-samples for David.’

Spock remained perfectly still, face barely registering the bout of information. Kirk had told him about Carol a little over a year ago during a chess game that had endured no less than three interruptions. Eventually, it was concluded in the dead of night by consensus of Kirk’s periodic insomnia and Spock’s Vulcan sleep schedule. 

He had seen Spock’s queen coming for his knight and kept track of it until his first officer broke the silence.

‘There is an old Earth poem, regarding a game of chess in ancient Persia. The match continued during wartime, and the players remained under the shade while they were invaded. They were oblivious to the destruction around them.’

‘Message Spock?’ Kirk asked, watching the Vulcan incline his head to his steepled hands in thought, the lights feathered to near darkness around them, chronometer blinking meaninglessly. 

‘I believe the poet was attempting to make the distinction that even in chaos, progress can only be made one move at a time,’ he plucked a pawn from its square and moved it up a level, nearing the end of the board to resurrect a fallen piece. ‘While it is an agreeable sentiment, the metaphor is of course, illogical.’

‘Prioritisation would take precedent,’ Kirk murmured, examining the board.

‘Precisely.’

He hummed, ‘there’s a second way to read that too,’ he said, taking out one of Spock’s other pawns, ‘Maybe it means that we pay attention to what we want to, no matter what’s happening. The basic preoccupations…prevail.’

Spock didn’t answer for a long time, eyeing the pieces individually, calculating. He moved his knight one space, a precursor to a ploy in trapping Kirk's king. 

Kirk glanced down at his hands flat on the table, ‘take me, for instance — I’ve been out here on one vessel or another for most of my life.’

‘I fail to see what else could call immediate attention at this time,’ he said, ‘you are free to choose the parameters of your own life.'

‘Well,’ he looked up, ‘some would consider taking ground assignments. I know a lot of Captains who came and went in the academy who hung up their braids for teaching so they could stay planetside.’ 

He lost the thread of his thoughts with Spock’s eyes in his, a kite floating out of hand. Kirk suddenly didn’t know where on the board he was, black or white. White, but he was hardly sure. He’d been swept away so quickly in the current of Spock’s attention. The Vulcan, waiting for him to say more, or to lapse back into silence. He was always so open in spite of what it seemed like to those who didn’t know him. But Kirk knew him well after three years, he knew he could say anything, and even if Spock did not have a personal scope, he would understand entirely. Accept entirely. 

Kirk focused on the lowest level of the board, ducking from Spock’s gaze. He swallowed, ‘the choice is always there, but while I was on track for the Enterprise assignment…I met Carol Marcus after I came back from the Farragut. She’d just finished her doctorate with a brilliant thesis that had chins wagging all over the academy. But she wasn’t interested in off-world assignments. And for a while, context and preoccupation lined up. It was a good year or so, then I got news of the Enterprise and the promotion, and she received a private grant for her work. While we were trying to plan things out, she realised she was pregnant.

We went back and forth on it, me thinking I could convince her we can do it while I was out here, her, thinking she could persuade me life wasn’t all traipsing around the galaxy - that’s what she called it. Then, at some point, we just couldn’t reconcile any version of a life either of us wanted. Not together.’

He moved his bishop up two spaces diagonally. 

‘We…’ Kirk grouped his hands, intwined them, ‘we had a boy, and she wanted him in her life. That was it.’

Spock nodded gently, ‘your preoccupation was exploration.’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you regret your decision?’

Kirk huffed, smiling around the sound, he tried to be still in the moment. Present to the point where every second was cutting into him. Spock across from him, all around them stars hurtling past in their multitudes, quasars, nebulas, life-forms no one had ever heard of, and flora no one could dream up. 

‘No,’ he said lightly, ‘I don’t. _This_ is my preoccupation.’

Spock stared at him for a beat; he slid his queen four spaces left and unseated his knight, baring the way to his king, and cornering him with his knight, ‘Check-mate.’ 

It was his first win in seven matches. 

Now, they remained poised in uncertainty. McCoy, holding the packet between both hands, and Spock standing between them. 

‘Is he unwell?’ Spock asked.

‘No, just as a precaution,’ Kirk shook his head. ‘Carol elected to have them in case.’

McCoy came around the bed, ‘what astounds me is that you couldn’t authorise access to the bio-sample Starfleet has stored at Earth HQ, they take those samples for a reason.’

‘DNA and bio-samples have some of the strictest regulations around them,’ Spock said, ‘according to code 34A, subsection F samples for regenerative medicine banking, cannot be transported between more than two points.’

McCoy sighed gruffly, ‘Then there’s no use for Starfleet to have that bank, all it does stir up eugenics controversies every once in a while. Make a fist, Jim.’

McCoy placed a tourniquet around his upper arm, tightening it. Kirk said, ’While we’re at it why do you need a new sample? The medical bank aboard has my DNA too.’ 

‘Well,’ he said, ‘every donation needs new authorisation, the first time I took samples from the command crew, they were only consenting and approving the use of the samples for medical purposes for themselves in case of accidents. How’d you think you got out of that scrape without nerve damage?’

‘The rules are inconsistent,’ Kirk shook his head, watching McCoy prepare the needle. 

‘Urgent situations have pushed these regulations to breaking point previously,’ Spock said.

‘Captain Shores,’ McCoy murmured, filling a vial and clicking in another one, ‘family demanded his bio-samples to regenerate his entire body for a funeral…bet it comes up daily in the Starfleet Academy’s medical lectures. Now that wasn’t particularly urgent.’

‘Under Starfleet code that may indicate an emotionally urgent situation,’ Spock inclined his head, ’However, the ethics of regenerative medicine are highly volatile.’

McCoy withdrew the needle and passed the skin over with a dermal regenerator once.

‘Good as new,’ he said, beginning to label the vials. ‘I’ll send the legal over to your desk, and you’ll get the final say.’

He straightened up and gave Spock his full attention, ‘and as for that…I doubt Captain Shores ever wanted a standstill husk of his body made just for a burial.’

‘Broadly put, Doctor, I agree,’ Spock nodded sombrely. 

‘Spock, what did you want to discuss before we got side-tracked?’ Kirk slid off the bio-bed, rolling down his sleeve. They could all discuss nurture and nature and the regenerative medicine born from eugenics until they were blue in the face, and they were on the same page in any case. It was a mess, it had always been a mess, and the regulations were still evolving.

McCoy picked up the packet, busying himself with it, ‘I have to prepare these.’

They watched the Doctor leave for his office, standing amongst the unoccupied beds, medical equipment chirping. Spock rounded the room and stood before him. 

‘I previously thought you would be off-duty for the next several days,’ he said again, ‘however, given the nature of the Enterprise’s incident and its impact on our schedule I don't believe there will be much free time shortly.’

Spock held out the package, ‘Happy Birthday, Jim.’

Kirk tried to read what it may be in his eyes before taking it. From its heft and edges, he could feel it was a book. He smiled, looking at it, rotating it in his hands. 

‘If you find yourself inordinately unoccupied for the next twenty-four hours, this may be of interest,’ Spock said, as Kirk peeled away one edge of the paper. He hadn’t unwrapped a gift in years, not since he’d been on Earth. Kirk laughed to himself involuntarily. He’d forgotten the dullest tactile sensation could remind him of how far from home he was. And how close too. If home existed at all, it could be this moment. 

‘Is something humorous?’ Spock asked tentatively. 

‘No,’ Kirk shook his head, glancing up, ‘It’s beautiful, thank you, Spock.’

Facing up was an old and what must have been a rare edition of _Leaves of Grass_ by Walt Whitman. The cover was fabric and stained yellow from age in several places; adorned with illustrations of a haven, lush green leaves, flowers and a small creek, Whitman’s name almost obscured by the foliage. He ran a thumb over the title reverently, the weight of the book increasing in his hand. He couldn’t look up just yet, worried what might come out of him if he did. He bit the inside of his cheek and opened the book to the middle. 

_Come closer to me;_  
_Push close, my lovers, and take the best I possess;  
_ _Yield closer and closer, and give me the best you possess._

Kirk’s breath caught in the bend of his throat, blinking rapidly to pass over the words. He shut the book and looked up. Spock stood in utter, graceful stillness, hands behind his back and chest out. A wordless sensation he’d experienced only once or twice in his life overcame him; being seen. 

He cleared his throat, ‘Spock, about before,’ he said, ‘I only meant that I think your work is valuable to you.’

Spock nodded softly, a ghost of a smile passing over his features and lightening his eyes, ‘You were not mistaken, it is a logical assumption.’ 

‘Good,’ Kirk nodded, his smile returning two-fold. ‘You know I’ve always loved Whitman, never thought I’d have a physical copy of my own.’

‘Alright,’ McCoy burst into the room with the tray before Spock could answer, ‘Jim, you’re all set. You need to eat and get your hypo, and then you can be on your way. And Spock, you’re not getting him out of this one.’

‘On the contrary, I have no wish to do so, Doctor,’ Spock glanced at McCoy, then discreetly at the book in Kirk's hands, ‘Lieutenant Uhura and I will be locating a supplier for the replacement components.’

‘Any idea of how long it might take, Mr Spock?’ Kirk upheld the prefix carefully, an attempt to snap back into professionalism. 

‘Farius Prime is within reach, it's a busy port for mercantile activity,’ he said, ‘We are currently approaching several reputable contacts.’

‘Keep me updated,’ he said, then felt McCoy's eyes burning into him and tapped the spine of the book with a smile, 'Remotely, of course.'

'Of course, Captain,' Spock nodded to him then to McCoy, sweeping from the room in a stroke of long lines and refined movement. 

‘ _Leaves Of Grass_ , huh?’ McCoy leaned over his shoulder. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Would you believe I opened my copy to a random page and Mr Whitman dropped that passage into my lap?


	5. Memory, Transact

_What is unknown to one, will be known to another_ , was a common Surakian saying. It contained several lessons and debated among modern, emerging philosophers as to which particular reading was the most logical. Many of them were Surakian revivalists, adding layers on layers. Spock had recognised early and under duress of his classmates’ scrutiny that Vulcans had a poor sense of irony. He was, of course, aware that he was amongst this group, and the paradox caused by his awareness bloomed, weed-like the decimals of Pi around him at times. 

The fraction of information that had escaped him presented itself as a tear in the tapestry of his memory. When he’d retired the previous evening, it had occurred to him as a misplacement; there was no doubt that he had memorised the serial numbers of _all_ engine components. But in the morning one serial number continued to escape him. He lay very still in bed, staring at the arch of the bulkhead, drifting through the carefully ordered ranks of his mind, the information he organised according to priority and necessity. Because of the upcoming replacements, the serial numbers were easily accessible. There were twenty thousand, four hundred and fifteen in total, barring connector pieces, spare equipment and emergency transmitters. 

It was rare that he had to resort to a process of elimination, but using the computer was an onerous defeat to swallow. He filtered through them quickly, watching the shifting lights, the chronometer counting the last hour before his shift began. 

He compiled twenty thousand, four hundred and fourteen serial numbers in the next five minutes.

_Missing one piece of a puzzle will invariably discredit the whole_ , Sarek had said that often and sternly. It came unbidden, niggling at the void of the last number like a tongue habitually going to the place of a missing tooth. The other twenty thousand and change meant nothing without the final number. Spock took a sharp breath and sat up.

He readjusted his thinking, visualising components and connecting them, naming them as if he were building the engine from scratch. Under the beat of the sonics he reached ten-thousand, at the sink, shaving, and then brushing his teeth, his memory climbed the thirteen-thousand, one-hundred and tenth piece — _transactor coil, 98EYPLRH1._ Spock dressed, brushed the lint from his blues — _emissions controller, 14YRGEB-6A_ , he sat on the edge of his bed, boots pressed between his knees as he polished one, then the other: _transwarp processor._ As he filed and responded to several comms, he slowed down but continued to run through the parts. 

When he emerged in the corridor, he rounded up the last ten pieces, shoulders tensing. Four, the doors were beginning to slide shut.

‘Mr Spock!’ 

His hand shot out reflexively, the doors stop-started open. 

‘Thank you,’ Kirk entered with a smile, his cologne drifting in with him, hair damp from the shower, ‘good morning.’

‘Good morning, Captain,’ Spock intoned. He cast his hands behind his back. What had he counted down up to? Five? No, four components remained. Kirk reached out to the lever, just shy of Spock’s back. _Fuel registration panel, 52IRHU…UT3_

Spock cleared his throat. 

‘How are you?’ 

Three serial numbers, two short of his answer, ‘I am well. Yourself?’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘more than ready to get back on that bridge. And, I’m about half-way through Whitman, thank you again by the way.’

Just on the cusp of his answer, Spock aborted his recollection and turned to Kirk, ‘have any particular observations occurred to you?’

Kirk thought for a moment, leaning near the wall, ‘I’m beginning to think he rewrites it every time I reread it.’

‘I fail to understand how that’s possible.’

‘I mean I just seem to focus on a different part each time,’ he said, ‘and that changes the work. I think...it made me a little homesick this time.’

They lapsed into silence, Spock brought his arms forward and crossed them, staring ahead, ‘it was not my intention to upset you.’

‘No, you haven’t,’ Kirk said, the doors opened to the bridge, and they stepped out. ‘The way he describes nature, Earth — makes up for it at the same time.’

Spock studied his features, ‘that is a paradox.’

'Yes,' Kirk grinned at him, ‘are you disappointed in me?’

Spock inclined his head to the side, and he had a sudden notion that the Captain possessed what he was missing. 

‘I merely don’t understand,’ he said softly, ‘may I ask you a question, Captain?’

Kirk’s smile dropped to seriousness at his tone. He raised his eyebrows; quick as water over rocks, the light over water and shadows in between, Spock could identify emotions filtering in him. 

‘There is a component of the engine, between the fuel registration panel, and the transistor muffler…’ he paused.

‘The transwarp rig,’ he nodded, looking up in concentration briefly, ‘I interned for Dr Garner when she ran a lab on alternates — what about it?’

'What is its serial number?'

'Ah, 3...35TFXYU-2.'

Spock held his breath, clenched and unclenched his teeth, ‘I must check its status,’ he said, and his voice seemed so small between them. 

‘No, really, Mr Spock?’

He stared at his feet, boots shining back. Spock looked up, ‘yesterday evening after my shift; I could not recall the serial number.’

‘And that troubled you?’

‘Indeed.’

Kirk smiled again, his eyes alight as they were when he knew something Spock didn’t. _Are you disappointed in me?_ Spock had the urge to parrot him.

‘There are roughly twenty thousand, four hundred and something pieces in the engine.’

'Twenty thousand, four hundred and fifteen, to be precise, Captain,' Spock corrected gently. 

'Right,' Kirk's smile doubled where other Officers had occasioned to shut him down or roll their eyes, ‘I don’t know the serial numbers for the majority of them. Their names, but not the numbers.’

Spock swallowed, tightening his arms across his chest, left palm clasping his heart in his side. ‘I see.’

‘I just keep the one, Spock,’ he said.

Kirk turned on his heel and went down, met by a yeoman with a PADD and a coffee. Before he sat down, he looked at Spock for a fraction of a second, eyes curious and an echo of his smile around them. Dumbstruck by the inane revelation Spock sat down and logged into his session, surveying ongoing radiation emissions, Enterprise stats that the previous science officer had left for him. 

He began to overview a risk assessment of the course Sulu had plotted to Farius Prime; it was a relatively calm sector discounting the business spats that occurred between inhabitants from free-trade. Given that Starfleet had screened their potential contact meant it was unlikely they would find any hostile intentions on the other side. At least from him. Kerrius’ profile was next on the cards. He was from Na’Nam, Vulcan, had studied engineering and built his business as a merchant for the last twenty years, being fifteen Spock’s senior. There was a small identification image of him, midnight black hair, thick brows, light eyes and a broad, severe mouth. While he was closer to Spock’s age, something in his profile brought up a sense of his father’s contemporaries at the Vulcan Science Academy. He straightened his back, scrolling through the rest of the text compiled by Giotto. 

_Farius Prime is not under Federation ruling and has declined the offer to join on several occasions, barring socio-political incentives put forward by Starfleet as the prime representative of the Federation. Humans make up a minority of both visitors and inhabitants on the planet, making up for approximately less than five percent in total according to the last census negotiated between the leader of Farius Prime and …_

_3-5-T-F-X-Y-U-2_

Something he had read at the academy occurred to him. At the very beginning of his time there, he had presumed that a bulk of his social shortcomings could be patched by studying sociological data and psychological studies. At the time, it had hardly occurred to him that being half-human had any bearing on him while he was on Earth. And it mostly hadn’t, Humans saw him as unerringly Vulcan, and Vulcans could only see a Human in insulting disguise. Both groups treated his telepathic abilities, imagined and otherwise, as pernicious at best. 

He paused in his reading to glance across the bridge; the Captain was speaking to engineer Scott about the repairs and time frames, two-weeks had been the most recent estimation, with cosmetic damage that would take the next month to repair. Then back: Giotto continued about the need to _exercise caution, the inability for direct beam down without consultation of Farius Prime's station…_

The term transactive memory had been coined on Earth in 1985, to describe an instance wherein humans would forget specific data, safe in the knowledge that it had committed in the memory of an associate, or family member, or lover. Previous to that morning he hadn’t been aware of the phenomena in himself, though he’d been aware of it often and looked for it in patterns between himself and other crew members. Spock had concluded that he was simply not human enough to experience it. 

‘Mr Spock, could you please join us?’ 

He stood at the last full stop of Giotto’s report; _while encountering direct aggression is within the twentieth percentile planet-side, at the behest of Kerrius, the security team recommends exercising great caution, and concealed carry of phasers._

Kirk stood beside Uhura at her panel, looking at him expectantly. Spock joined them.

‘What have we got?’

‘We have made successful introductions to Kerrius. He has sent a confirmation of all the replacement components we’ll need,’ Uhura said, ‘he won’t be on Farius Prime much longer so we should rendezvous as soon as we arrive.’

‘Good,’ Kirk nodded, ‘I want immediate updates if he sends any more communication.’

‘Yes, Sir.’

Kirk turned back, ‘Mr Sulu, what’s our current ETA?’

‘Twenty-one point…five hours, Captain,’ he answered, ‘We will be arriving in Farius Prime’s afternoon.’

Spock nodded, ‘the days are forty-eight Earth hours long. Majority of the planet is built-up except for a few forest reserves that don't allow public access. The atmosphere is similar to Earth, but it is heavily polluted - so we should exercise the proper caution.’

‘You agree with Giotto’s assessment,’ Kirk asked, ‘of concealed carry?’

‘I believe it would be a pertinent measure,’ he said, ‘according to Kerrius it is also common on Farius Prime.’

‘Yes…that’s what I’m worried about,’ he rubbed his chin thoughtfully, looking at Uhura, ‘Lieutenant, have you picked up any chatter that might indicate why?’

She thought for a moment, ‘nothing conclusive, Sir, but there’s some signs,’ she said, ‘from what I’ve gathered in subspace data, and public radio archives, Farius Prime has a relatively high crime rate in spite of high incarceration rates.’

‘Possible corruption, then?’

‘Would seem that way,’ she said, ‘but we can’t pass judgment without more information. It could also be skewed public opinion. There are very few permanent, indigenous inhabitants. Merchant classes mostly occupy the planet, and sideline economies — like a port — lot’s of Orion, Ferengi and some Romulan activity. 

‘Casual bypass of the neutral zone,’ Kirk added, ‘I suppose there wouldn’t be a neutral zone if no one were trying tocross it.’

‘Besides the social cautions we must exercise, there are remarkably few florae and fauna contaminants planet-side due largely to eradication of its natural environment in pedestrian areas,’ Spock said, crossing his arms. ‘The tension rests on us beaming down.’

Kirk’s thoughtful expression fell short of its conclusion. He frowned, ‘ _Us_?’ he said, ‘Mr Spock, I’ll need you on the bridge.’

_…less than five-percent…_ he arched an eyebrow, ‘Captain, a landing party consisting of Humans is likely to attract the ire of anyone who sees you. Vulcans, on the other hand, are far more common travellers in this quadrant. Logically, I should beam down with you so that we can blend in.’

Kirk exhaled, shoulders falling. Defeat had a particular rhythm in his body, ‘I suppose you have the percentages to back all that up too?’

Spock opened his mouth to add them, but Kirk held up a hand, ‘Alright. Street clothes, communicator and phaser — we beam down as soon as docking procedures have completed. 

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘As you were,’ he said quietly. 

Back at his console, Spock signed off on Giotto’s report. 

_Specialisation, coordination, credibility_ — were all hallmarks that a transactive memory had taken place. Spock had been aware of the Captain’s internship with Doctor Garner; it had occurred to him, subconsciously, then consciously that he had the information and finally, he hadn’t second-guessed his answer. 

And his presence on the landing party was likely to increase the mission success rates by fifteen percent, but the Captain had trusted him. _Jim_ had trusted him; _specialisation, coordination, credibility._ Spock took a deep breath. It was not a coincidence. Not an accident, in the same way, that Whitman was not a mistake, but a meditated message. He had sent him the words he didn’t have, the only way he knew how, and to have instead have made him homesick…it wasn’t only a failure - it laid bare how simplistically Spock had thought about everything. How easily he’d allowed himself to believe that it would be _enough_. Shame flooded him, pouring through the grates of his careful constructs, sewage in a clean system. His heart picked up two extra beats per minute. To presume that any of this was welcome suddenly seemed…pernicious, at best. 

He sprung shut a steel-trap on his own reaching hands. Something in him bled internally, and he revelled in it, his ability to control himself, to stop constructs forming before they solidified, it allowed him a bitter peace, a returning flow of logic in clear streams. 

‘Sulu! Report?’

Spock whipped toward the conn where Kirk was at the edge of his seat. 

‘Report, sir?’ Sulu had started at the Captain’s voice, turning back to him with a frown. He double-checked his console, ‘Nothing, Captain — we’re on the course I plotted earlier. No disruptions, moving forward at warp one.’

Chekov checked and turned as well, ‘all systems operating normally.’

‘No turbulence? Nothing on the radar?’

‘No, Sir,’ Chekov and Sulu spoke in near unison. 

‘Radiation is at nominal levels,’ Spock spoke finally. Kirk turned to him with wide eyes, something in his expression was half-wild, and he swallowed, ‘we are on schedule, the engine is holding its own.’

He nodded lightly, blinking several times, but his eyes remained glazed. He turned back, looking down at the PADD he’d been holding for a long moment. Kirk picked up his stylus, and his hand trembled before he began writing. 

Even as they made strides to recover from the incident, it lingered. It lingered in the Captain’s shoulders, and it came in a tremor under Spock’s boots. The circuitry was complete, but they were flying like two halves of a discus, gaining momentum and hurtling into some oblivion. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, we are really heading into the deep-end of this thing!  
> I would really appreciate some feedback on the dialogue/characterisation and pacing if anyone has any thoughts.
> 
> vvlcant.tumblr.com


	6. Orchids and Poppycock

The rows of orchids shivered as he moved between them. His long strides like a skimmed pebble caused ripples to push out from the epicentre of his step on the narrow, grated plank and onto the dirt beds and their charge. Spock moved purposefully, taking notes of the indentations on a PADD throughout the greenhouse dome. He'd made no more than ten steps before he reached the single seat by the furthest diameter and turned back. As the science officer heading a small study in the Trilling Orchids from Delinia II, it had become his habit to attend to them every evening before retiring to his quarters and doubly, barring emergencies; before beaming down with a landing party. 

The dome was situated in the sustainable food stores, neighbouring expanses of science labs and study rooms. Rising two decks, bisecting one horizontally— _the gardens_ , as Kirk had categorised it at some point. It was set in the centre of a grid of planks, intercrossing over planet M flora. The greenhouse had been an initial design to grow food for space travel. Though eventually, synthesisers had phased out that need. Now, the use of the unit differed from ship to ship. Many still elected to farm fast-growing fruits and vegetables, but the gardens best reflected the ship’s Captain.

Aboard the Enterprise, there were sets of blue amaryllis from Deneva, and graduating fungi growing in spirals, tipping over sheets of transparent baby’s breath on orange leaves. All under the shadow of the giant ferns beginning to creep up the semi-opaque glass separating the science labs. There were a dozen smaller batches of what was ostensibly flowers, separated by careful measurements. There were three sections in total, divided between three scientists, Spock himself, and out of sheer fascination: Lieutenant Sulu. 

On Delinia II, Trilling Orchids exploded in sheets that spanned over the horizon. They had been in full bloom when the Enterprise happened by in the middle of the first of five years. Beaming down, they had been disconcerted by the dancing, shimmering effect of the flowers, and the movement had triggered the security to whip out phasers momentarily. Only the Captain kneeled to examine one specimen after a few moments of study. The flower had quivered away from his gentle, curious hand until it was tethered by its own stem. Kirk stopped short of touching it; letting his hand encircle it. The flower always kept its bloom facing forward, dancing, and emitting a low, barely distinguishable trilling. 

_Fascinating._

_Yeah_ , and his voice had been lost in awe, enraptured by his swaying hand, the acquiescing flower, its at once gregarious and paper-thin whiskers short of laughing. Spock had never heard his Captain speak like that, and it had struck him hard in the places he lived, in his side, under his ribs, at the base of his throat. He looked away as if he had encroached on a private moment.

They walked through the field for a time, the flowers clearing a path for each footfall before springing back. In the scheme of things, Delinia II was only a stopover. The Enterprise was using the time between two diplomatic missions to gather some data, and they had spread out, and eventually, Spock found himself alone. He had collected as much information as he could on the tricorder and beamed up soil samples. However, without potentially injuring the planet-form, it was impossible to study them further. And he found in himself, an inexplicable longing, pushed wide by the scientific ethics he held. 

‘Mr Spock, we’re ready to leave orbit,’ his comm chirped as he stared over the field, the sky chalk-blue, residual with pale red of the sun. 

‘But take your time, we have a few moments to spare.’

‘Spock out.’

He knelt, knees opening a wide sluice between the flowers, shy and obedient. Spock reached out; the petals were psionically null as predicted by his tricorder readings. He pushed his hand in one direction then the other, slowing down and speeding up, waving his fingers in a line and making fists. Coordinating a dance of his own to search for patterns. When he watched his atoms disintegrate under his feet five minutes later, it was with reluctance. Orchids were moving to fill out the space he’d occupied. It would be as if they had never been there. None of them had. 

Sometime after they had completed their diplomatic rendezvous, Kirk led him down to the greenhouse after rounds in engineering, late, very late into the beta shift. He remained unassuming, but he knew that if the Captain was on the same sleep pattern as himself, then he was suffering another bout of insomnia. Spock thought he'd want an update on any one of the experiments he was running. It was unexpected when he turned into the gardens, down the centre-lane and to the dome. Inside, the orchids had been transported in neat rows, swaying happily with their first foray into their space. 

‘I thought you’d appreciate the opportunity to spend more time with them,’ Kirk said, smiling, watching him for a reaction. 

And the Vulcan had so dearly wished that he could give his Human friend the expressions he may have expected. Instead, he’d dropped his arms and shook his head, eyes wide to take in the orchids in the red light. And what would he have said? What was there to say to a gesture like that? He’d only managed to avoid Kirk’s eyes again by kneeling to a flower, swaying around his hand like an old friend. 

‘I do,’ he muttered, ‘I do appreciate it, Captain. Thank you.’

Kirk rubbed his neck, 'I thought the dome was wasted on the tomatoes.’ 

Presently, Spock stood stock-still on the grate, stylus whipping down the PADD in precise movements, in Vulcan, which the computer turned to common lingua. He rarely wrote reports in Vulcan, but in the dome, condensation thick and filmy on the glass, opaque, he could rarely conjure up the sufficient words in a tongue that wasn't his first. 

He stepped through to the end and sat down. There was a chronometer adjacent to him, over the entrance counting down the last five hours to beaming down to Farius Prime. As he made his final notations, the wall-comm behind him opened. 

‘Mr Spock?’

‘Spock here.’

‘The alpha shift is about to turn over,’ Uhura said, ‘the Captain wanted to let you know that landing party members are required to be in civilian clothes.’

‘I shall dress accordingly, thank you, Lieutenant.’

The disruption was enough to prompt him to more pressing matters as part of the preparation for the mission. There was still time to have a meal before getting dressed, then filling out his log for the day. He concluded his notation with one last sentence and headed out, orchids strumming goodbye, the grate clicking under his footfalls. 

* * *

Plomeek soup typically took three minutes and five seconds to synthesise, and Spock inanely counted down as he watched the machine pour out his share into a bowl, down to the second. He pulled out the tray and turned to the mess hall, filling up quickly after alpha shift’s conclusion. 

A red mast rose out of the sea of three primary colours, ‘Mr Spock,’ Scott waved to him from the far left corner. 

Spock moved toward his table, Dr McCoy sitting opposite him, determinedly going through a salad. 

‘Mr Scott, Doctor,’ Spock sat beside Scott. 

McCoy rose a hand in hello in favour of keeping his chewing mouth shut. 

‘First things first,’ Scott said, reaching beside him on his seat and pulling up a black ball, no larger than a walnut, ‘Here’s the wee thing I found inside that shell.’

It took Spock a moment to recognise it; the centre mechanism of the Klingon gadget he’d been investigating. 

‘Thank you. I trust the micro-drivers were not too difficult to programme.’

‘A slice of cake,’ he said, dropping it into Spock’s palm, ‘I suppose the Klingons are getting to Starfleet’s point - the guid gear does come in sma’ bulk.’

‘It would appear so,’ Spock nodded, turning it over carefully.'

‘What in the blue hell, is that thing?’ McCoy asked, squinting at it, ‘And where’s the rest of it?’

Spock offered it to him between forefinger and thumb, but McCoy did not take it, opting to lean close for a better look. 

‘I believe it is a remote spyware device,’ he said, ‘But Mr Scott certainly knows more than I, by now.’

‘Hardly,’ the engineer’s eyes crinkled at the mention, he shook his head. ‘It fell apart so soon as I got through its shell. I was going to give it back to you to puzzle together.’

It was matte-black, and running through it were various white veins, thin and symmetrically cutting across. Spock turned it and counted five, all intersecting at multiple points. It was too refined to have been Klingon-made, the construction was vastly different from what was understood of their Klingon devices. Spock realised that he should have grasped that as soon as he saw the outer shell.

Spock found his appetite receding. He opened his mouth to schedule a time with the Engineer to go over it in detail, but McCoy spoke first. 

‘Well, I suppose that’s practically a holiday gift for Spock.’

‘Dr McCoy, I fail to see the correlation between a sensitive device’s mysteries and an allocated shore-leave event.’

‘I just think you’ll enjoy putting it back together,’ McCoy smiled, shrugging. Scott chuckled. After years of strangers joking at his expense, Spock could discern that this one was not necessarily of that nature. 

‘I believe it will provide certain answers regarding the Klingons,’ he said, ‘if the event should come to pass it will be significant.’

‘Poppycock,’ McCoy clawed back the idea with his fork, ‘the first thing Starfleet will do is put the information in a vault with a top clearance. Age it like fine Saurian brandy until a desperate moment when we’ll need it. And if it’s a spy device we don’t understand, should we be throwing it around like a rubrics cube?’

‘As always - charming and arcane, Doctor. I have completed rigorous testing and procedures to make sure any transmitters were disabled,’ he said calmly, placing the centre by his tray. He steepled his hands with his elbows on the table. ‘Besides which, that course of action by Starfleet is unlikely, and a paranoid supposition.’

‘A paranoid supposition?’ McCoy’s brows shot up, ‘Spock, have you failed to notice that two of our last missions are still—’

‘I think we can agree it’s an interesting find,’ Scott interrupted, ‘and that Starfleet has certain regulations to uphold, we dinnae live in a perfect world now, do we?’

Spock nodded, glancing between the engineer and the Doctor, _‘perfect_ is a dysfunctional notion.

McCoy sighed and raised his cup of coffee, ‘to imperfection, then.’ 

‘What is imperfect?’ Chekov asked as he and Uhura arrived with their trays in tow, cups steaming with tea and coffee respectively. Chekov moved to Engineer Scott’s right and Uhura to McCoy's left. Chekov slid his tray onto the table and took the PADD he’d been clasping under one arm and put it beside it before sitting. 

‘Oh nothing important,’ McCoy said, winking at Spock, who shot up an eyebrow, ‘you two off for the day?’

‘No,’ Chekov sat, voice turning down and mouth jarring up, ‘We will go back once you all beam down, Sulu is still on the bridge. Also, "day" is an overstatement, Doctor.’

‘Well just be glad it’s not snowy up here,’ McCoy said, smiling. 

Chekov groaned, ‘I would give anything for a handful of snow. Moscow is neck-deep at this very moment.’

Spock looked up to the wall console over the mess. They were rounding a little shy of five hours, depending on how soon the transporter hub would give them the go-ahead. The conversation gathered up, went on and flowed around him, a rock in the water as he’d imagined so many times. He scanned the mess one more time before picking up the small central computation system again. The Captain was on the same schedule, and per the previous events, he had often joined them for the meal before an away mission quite reliably. He had been notably absent from meals with other crew since the debris storm, almost a week. 

Spock returned his attention to the device, running it between his hands. It had been opened but at the cost of doubling the number of unknowns; who had produced it? Who was willing to make weaponry for the Klingons, or even sell it to them and be complicit?

He put the centre and the thoughts, it would have to wait until after Farius Prime. He began to eat, soup already lukewarm. Around the table, the conversation had dwindled and fallen between Uhura and Engineer Scott. Their discussion of the universal translator's shortcomings, which had been their starting point had morphed into a conversation regarding the yellow moons of Cartius Three. Expendable, meandering conversations Humans enjoyed wherein Vulcan silence would have prevailed.

There was a melody in the talk, with its designated shifts and crescendos. He noted that a conversation between any two other crew members would not have a similar rhythm. It was unique to the speakers and their relationship as if two people could make a thumbprint at once. 

Chekov was absorbed in his PADD, McCoy finishing off his cup in pensive sips. Chekov exhaled in surprise, head jerking up. Everyone turned to him, and when he looked up to see if anyone had seen his reaction, he froze. 

‘What?’ McCoy asked, putting down his cup.

Chekov straightened up, cryptically he said, ‘news, Doctor.’

‘Go on,’ Scott said, ‘Nothing we haven’t read here, lad.’ 

‘Oh yeah,’ McCoy agreed, ‘Like that time some publication said we’d time-warped and been replaced by a hoax crew.’

Scott and Uhura laughed, Chekov nervously smiling through it. 

‘And the next week, they said that we all _actually_ disappeared. As if Starfleet was pretending we were in commission to save themselves,’ Uhura added. 

‘Aye,’ Scott nodded, ‘And there was the time the Enterprise went rogue. The Enterprise this and that. Every time the Captain sends a log to Starfleet and its declassified, or we make shore-leave, there’s a whole new volume.’

‘And I thought what we did was already exciting enough,’ McCoy said, ‘As if flinging around the sun happens daily.’

‘That’s still classified,’ Uhura said. 

‘That’s right, it is, isn’t it?’ McCoy agreed, and gave Spock a pointed look, before turning back to Chekov, ‘So what is it now?’

‘Nothing _that_ …fantastic,’ Chekov shrugged, his news seemed dwarfed now. ‘It was about the debris storm.’

Uhura looked at Spock carefully. She crossed her arms on the table, ’Must’ve been…terrifying to go through that with an empty bridge.’

‘Fortunately, I could not experience terror,’ Spock rose an eyebrow, ‘and the Captain and crew members on the bridge handled the situation admirably.’

‘Seems like a holo the way it’s written here,’ Chekov nodded to the PADD, scrolling. 

‘Who wrote it?’ Uhura asked. 

‘One of the cadet papers in Starfleet,’ he said, ‘Some of them were on the starbase and started following the chatter, then put it all together.’

‘They spliced into the transmissions?’ Uhura frowned, ‘That’s against regulation.’

Chekov consulted it again, ‘Apparently, the subspace channel was accidentally left unencrypted, not very difficult to receive in that case. Also, within regulation.’

‘Lieutenant Pavao,’ McCoy said grimly, ‘She was knocked out during the turbulence - she must have accidentally switched it when she went down.’

‘What details does the story contain, Lieutenant?’ Spock asked, sitting at closer attention, rank suddenly present amongst them. 

‘A full transcript, Sir,’ Chekov said. ‘And some…analysis.’ 

‘The Enterprise is responsible for the leak,’ he said, ‘and the highest-ranking crewman is answerable for any breach.’

‘You mean, Jim? What can they do to him?’ McCoy asked, ‘It was an accident, absolute chaos. You two couldn’t have stopped it. We’re lucky you could do anything at all.’

‘These circumstances may not be considered compelling evidence in a court-martial hearing, Doctor.’

‘My god! Listen to yourself Spock, would Starfleet court-martial their finest Captain over this?’ he asked. 

‘They would understand,’ Scott said, ‘Just the transcript itself should be enough evidence, I’d think.’

‘There have been accidents before,’ Uhura said, quiet amongst the rising voices of Scott and McCoy, ‘Communications officers that have left channels open and compromised missions, briefings. Starfleet takes it very seriously.’

‘These are exceptional circumstances th—’

‘—We cannot change what has already transpired,’ Spock stood up, tugging down his uniform, ‘only how we behave in the light of their consequences.’

‘Thank you for the brutal truism, Spock,’ McCoy said, ‘But have we tread so far into the bureaucracy of Starfleet that they would lose sight of the fact that we’re all just people — people — Spock? Error and incident be damned? We’re not machines,’ he stood slowly and levelled with him, ‘You may not include yourself in that inferior group of Human, but the Captain is.’

Mention of the Captain grounded the regulation codes that Spock had started to review mentally. He was reminded of the way he had been thrown into the helm console at first impact, the sound of his arm snapping. Spock could clearly see his blood jewelling his yellow shirt, and his eyes losing focus, rolling back in his head, entrusting its total weight to his hand. His hands under his jaw, something like tar rising in his lungs as he fought it with his name. It was all Human, and fallible and breakable and mortal. Spock shut it down. 

‘I must speak to the Captain,’ he said, glancing toward Chekov, ‘Lieutenant, please send me a copy of that report. Uhura, contact the responsible cadets and request that they remove the transcript from their publication immediately. Do not contact Starfleet until we know more.’

Uhura and Chekov both nodded, but Bones slapped his hand onto the table as Spock was about to turn, ‘Dammit, listen to me, Spock!’ 

Only then did he notice that the mess had gone dead. Nearly thirty crewmen were sitting at their tables, solidified in the effort to become invisible. 

Spock stared at McCoy and McCoy glared back unrelentingly. Neither of them moved. 

Scott stood slowly, ‘Clear the mess,’ he said, looking around. 

Tables and chairs scraped around them, footsteps taking form as everyone filtered out, leaving their trays where they were. Spock realised it was highly probable that the rest of the crew would know about this soon enough: expendable, meandering conversation. In this case, the command team’s reputation was at risk. He blinked and attempted to regulate his breathing. The world seethed in him. 

Scott left the mess last, speaking sternly and steadily, ’you two better end this right here lads. Before we beam down.’

Then silence pervaded, except for the Enterprise herself, her engine and the circuit board relay signals whistling through the hulls, a synthesiser chortled in the corner of the room. 

‘To hell with rules and regulations and Starfleet brass,’ McCoy began, voice rough, teeth grit. Spock had very rarely heard him speak in that manner, ‘you can’t tell Jim about the article until we’re out of Farius Prime’s orbit.’

‘It is my duty as First Officer to inform the Captain of everything under his purview,’ he put his hands behind his back tightly, ‘particularly when it comes to Starfleet Command.’ 

‘And mine is to look after the mental and physical wellbeing of everyone aboard this ship,’ McCoy said, ‘and I’m telling you that the last thing that man needs is bad news right now. Not before we go down to a non-Federation planet where a hundred things are waiting to get sprung on us!’

‘Doctor, we’re in violation of regulations. However, the situation is not as grave as you would believe,’ he said, ‘It may be resolved before we beam down. Reporting it later would implicate us, and I cannot report it without the Captain knowing.’

‘I know I’m not half as bright as you, but don’t you think I know some things too? All’s the same since it’s not me with the weight of the entire world on my shoulders; four hundred lives, a ship that can barely put up shields, and less than a year of this circus left. It wasn’t me who couldn’t get home in time to bury his brother or his father. It wasn’t me who had to let a woman he loved - a good woman - get mowed down in the street for the sake of these braids!’

Mutiny, in a word, was the Doctor’s solution. That went beyond any directive, any mission or their roles. They would have to be loyal to the Captain even if it meant...Spock faltered and his logic faltered. He shut it from himself. He stepped to the side and tucked in his chair.

‘I will perform my duty, Doctor, to the best of my ability,’ he said with finality. ‘And I trust that the Captain will do the same.’

‘Spock, look—’ McCoy called again. He stopped just short of the door, ‘I know you don’t feel things, or maybe you do — hell, I don’t know how being Vulcan works. But if you even have a scrap of affection for Jim, you’d override this to buy him some time.’ 


	7. Pulsewidth

The article opened inconspicuously, noting the variety of Federation day activities and a description of the debris storm. Then without preamble came the transcript. It was as he remembered, but it was as though he was looking at a sculpture from an angle that had previously been invisible. The tactical return was time-stamped, and Spock paused for a long time on the final sentence.

_2512, FO Spock: Jim — Medical to bridge, now. Jim?_

He took a deep breath and went onto the final passage. There was speculation as to where the debris had come from, a notation of Kirk’s Kobayashi Maru solution, and its sudden short-sightedness, _luck_. Finally, in praise of the crew, Nevin, Pavao, the engineer Alameda. And himself. _Unflappable, capable._ _Y_ _et still at the folly of a no-win situation in spite of his genius._ The revelation that his human half was undoubtedly present, and _open to provocation when it came to Captain James T. Kirk._

_For_ _many cadets, who are undergoing their final and most demanding tasks within Starfleet academy on Relva VII, the Enterprise’s close brush with destruction is both a warning and a gift. A warning, that though we may train for every possible outcome and acceptance of command, certain factors will always remain beyond our control. A gift, because it proves that while we have trained long and hard to scour ourselves of human shortcomings, it is that very humanity that could save us, push us to strive toward helping ourselves, those close to us and others. Our humanity is what makes the long evenings and rigorous tasks worthwhile. And First Officer Spock of the USS Enterprise has demonstrated that a sense of humanity is not restricted to the species. And simultaneously, there is our greatest short-coming, relegating universality, what is essentially love, to a word that has ‘human’ in it. The Enterprise is an excellent example of universal love, and the practice of it in active duty, something all cadets should strive to remember while we refine our technical abilities._

Spock locked the PADD. He took a breath and pressed fingers into the jellies of his eyes, attempting to stabilise himself on the rocking tide of thoughts. The article had him laid bare and dissected, and the closeness he’d cultivated for the Captain, used. The matters that had made his forefathers and ancestors renounce emotions were made public and raw — snatched no less from the moment that could have cost them their lives. That _had_ cost lives, dozens by the last count. 

Something primordial, something sewed into his very essence shrilly rang out that one life’s value had been higher than the others to him. Spock felt a wave of nausea, embedded sensations that a meditative trance couldn’t defeat. He shot up so quickly the PADD slipped from his lap. It tumbled away and thunked into the divider with a pathetic sound. Laying his palms flat on the table, he leaned forward, staring at the space between the bands of tendons turned white and taut. 

He breathed, and he breathed again, and again. What he had been taught since childhood dawned on him in practice - something he hadn’t truly believed - which his human half had deferred for the sake of itself: no good feeling could exist without what was dark and sacrificial and pre-cognitive. The existence of any emotion, however good and well-intentioned was proof of its dark opposite. 

What steadied him was duty. Sight returning, ringing receding. Rows and rows of regulations that were premeditated for a reason, as lines of code made computers, so had the regulations made Starfleet, and the Federation. The parameters of life as it had been in post-contact Earth, and Vulcan. 

Spock straightened up, hands going lax, points of tension melting to helplessness at his sides. If he were to reinstitute his balance, he had to inform the Captain of the piece. To disprove the article’s thesis, and therefore the existence of these fleeting emotions.

Spock cleared his throat and tugged down the hem of his uniform. He opened a channel on the computer. 

‘Spock to Captain Kirk,’ he said. In the left-hand corner of the screen, he noted there were four hours to beaming down. 

There was a pause. 

‘Kirk here, what is it Mr Spock?’ his face appeared on the screen.

‘I need to discuss something with you,’ he said, ‘it is rather sensitive.’ 

He considered him for a second. He nodded, ‘Alright, meet me in my quarters in fifteen minutes. Kirk out.’

The screen flicked black, and Spock knew he could not afford to engage in another internal battle. There wasn’t enough time to meditate or enter a trance to combat it either. Mechanically, he moved to his closet to get ready for the mission, sifting through his clothes. Black and aubergine made up a significant fraction of his robes, pants and shirts, stiff-necked, minimal buttons and clasps and within characteristic Vulcan fashion, designed to absorb and retain heat. He landed on a white tunic and a dense, woollen set of grey robes. He picked up the cracked PADD and placed it flat on the table, then logged a request for another one. 

And the time slipped, running from him like a desert creature. Spock gave himself a cursory once over in the bathroom mirror before leaving his quarters. Three strides were all that separated his from the Captain’s door, and on arrival, it slid open in expectation.

As soon as he stepped inside, he could hear an unfamiliar voice. It was low, older, and distinctly Human, ringing with disdain. The Captain was at his desk. He was hunched over with his head in his hand, cast in hazy light from the screen. 

The woman onscreen moved her hands in rigid bursts as she spoke, spat ‘—but I know for a fact that Starfleet wasn’t _this_. We weren’t trying to diddle in space for the sake of it. I’ve never met you, but I don’t need to, to know your pathetic excuse of five-year mission has so far been nothing — nothing — but a personal bid for rank and notches in your belt. It was a publicity stunt when they commissioned you and it's a goddamn publicity stunt now...'

Spock began to leave, but the Captain noticed him. 

‘Computer, pause,’ his voice was raw, exhausted. 

‘I apologise, I didn’t mean to pry.’

‘It’s okay, I lost track of time,’ he muttered, carding his hair back and clearing his throat. ‘Come in, Spock.’

The door slid shut behind him. Spock couldn’t stop his eyes flickering to the paused frame onscreen, her bared teeth and glittering eyes. 

Kirk swallowed, ‘computer, standby,’ it went to nothing. He stood up, supporting himself on the back of the chair as if he were temporarily enfeebled. He rubbed his eyes, dressed in a longsleeved thermal shirt, non-regulation black slacks, halfway in form for Farius Prime. 

‘That was…’ Kirk stared down, ‘There was a cadet on the control station, and her mother is ex-Starfleet — she must’ve gotten my personal comm from her old connections.’

Spock blinked twice, attempting to digest everything. Kirk stepped closer, three feet of dimly lit space separating them. He was wearing thick, white socks that left impressions in the carpet. A fierce protectiveness overcame Spock. 

‘Anyway,’ Kirk exhaled hard, hooking his hands on his hips, ‘What did you need to tell me?’

‘That is unacceptable,’ Spock clenched his hands behind his back. ‘to equate the incident or its results as anyone’s fault is an irrational response.’

‘People in grief tend to behave irrationally.’

Spock inclined his head to the side, ‘Captain, do you believe her death is your fault?’

‘ _Thirty-six_ people are dead, Spock,’ he said quietly, glancing down, ‘saying it wasn’t my fault won’t send them home to their families.’ 

‘Believing it was will not either.’

‘And why should I get an out?’ his head snapped up, eyes hard and dark, ‘why is it such a priority that I let it go? Thirty-six people are dead, most of them were cadets. Kids, Spock. And the Enterprise has lost seventy-eight crewmen in the past four years — a hundred and fourteen people are dead—’

‘—that is an oversimplification,’ his voice emerged harshly. ‘And it is unjustified. You could not have prevented their deaths any more than you could have predicted the precise timing and trajectory of the debris. To welcome random chance as a virulent fault is fatuous.’

'It’s not your place to mediate how I feel about this - to tell me how I _feel_ about anything.’

‘Guilt negates any good that has come from our time on the Enterprise.’

The embers of his fury fizzled to an indescribable hurt in his eyes, ocean foam on sheets of glass, ‘you'll have to forgive me, Mr Spock - I’m only Human.’

Spock’s hands escaped. They pushed past the barriers of his self-control and grabbed Kirk's shoulders. The mad dash against his reasoning had finally won for the first time in four years. 

The Captain's eyes widened, and he moved to match him. But by then, it was too late. Spock's barriers caught up to him. He turned his head away at the last moment and Jim’s face fell in the crook of his neck, mouth ajar against his pulse. 

There was a protracted attrition. Jim's chest punched out like the sail of a ship in a storm, breath cascaded down his neck, the scent of his shampoo and skin folded Spock closer still and he clutched his shoulders to save himself from being washed away. He felt Jim swallow and bring his hands up to his sides, and there was a brief, nebulous struggle and Spock couldn't define if they were pushing away or pulling into one another. It took hands clutching swathes of his robes to depart them. And they both held on when they were unlocked as if to safeguard from crashing back in. 

Kirk stared at the ground between them, ‘I-I’m sorry.'

Spock let go, and he did too. He  found out there was a monumental effort in stepping back, one and then two paces. Straightening up his robes, the thick wool swayed under his hands, making him aware of his arousal and the rest of his singing, howling body.

‘You are not at fault,’ he said softly, clearing his throat, ‘Captain.’

Kirk rubbed his chin, looking up; his pupils had blown wide, face flushed.  Spock dipped his gaze.

‘It’s not anyone’s fault.'

‘If you’ll excuse me, I must complete my logs before we beam down.’

‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘Of course, Mr Spock.’

Then it was almost with the ease of gravity that Spock left him, rolling out of the room, curled tightly in his mind with arousal still thrashing his system. He didn’t turn into his quarters, going further, robes sweeping behind him and cutting air and light and time. 

* * *

They materialised in a cube made entirely of glass. Rain pummelled the sides, drops cutting down condensation in volatile rivulets and outside, bodies moved past in smears of colour against the grey-turquoise diffuse. Dim sounds invaded the station, the mechanical gears of industrial activity and cars crushing shouts and punchy chatter into surges of action — no familiar tongues. There was the smell of the wet, considerably alkaline and bitter and the temperature had dropped markedly. Spock reinstituted his expectations to adjust. Beside him, the Captain, Dr McCoy, Scott and Security Lieutenant Vlahos stiffened with the seething, whistling wind coming from an inch-gap skirting the walls. 

The alien operating the station waved them through briskly. Three, five knuckled hands gripped the sides of the console, and quicksilver eyes with no pupils studied them and their mismatched attire. He had a universal translator piece fastened to the side of his jaw that spoke as he emitted a sound that was barely in Spock’s auditory range. 

‘Welcome to Farius Prime, J.T. Kirk and party,’ he said, looking back down at the console and beginning to transmit what was presumably the next engagement sequence. 

‘Help yourself to a familiarisation card, note that there is no use of weaponry on Farius Prime, no consumption of prohibited items in open containers in public, no loitering and no encrypted transmission initiations. We are a non-Federation, non-Klingon Empire planet and indication of interference on behalf of these parties will be considered hostile. This will invoke imprisonment subject to review of the high-council, barring diplomatic intervention by your home-planets. Do you understand and accept these terms?’

His head twitched up, staring intently at the Captain.

‘Yes, we accept.'

‘Very well, we sincerely hope you enjoy your stay.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ooooooooh boy, alright. 
> 
> So I've been compiling a playlist while I go through the drafting process and it's a stand-in soundtrack. If anyone is interested drop me a line and I'll make an 8tracks version (or Spotify). Anyway, I've been working so hard to resist naming chapters Aphex Twin or Arca songs, but I finally caved in. rip


	8. Mercantile Interests

They filed out, and noise exploded around them, the yelling and calling and clacking in unknown tongues that could have been genial just as easily as they were hostile. There was a bustling market on the other side of the street, and people sitting on sidewalks under the shelter of store awnings attempting to make sales by shrieking through the din, all of it under rain drumming in a one-two beat. Free enterprise was pouring out of the fissures, whistling, bawling moments of sale, and brief sparks of confrontation under neon signage. The street flickered in epileptic episodes of attention that would come and go as one passed. And so the bodies moved, and there was the smell of crude fuel and piss, mixed into the acrid water, running snow to a slurry in the gutters and across the streets, or elsewhere it had solidified to sheets of ice that cracked underfoot. Feet kicked up discards of food wrappers and inordinate pieces of junk, and within moments they were all speckled from the knees down with scum, water running into their eyes and down the napes of their necks. 

Kirk led them through at a brisk pace, unwilling to fall trap to the unfamiliarity or chaos. They merged into the crowd, two abreast and determined to appear unphased. He squinted up to the apex of skyscrapers overhead to a single vanishing point, all teeth, all grey, seeming to direct the rain with even added force and block out any semblance of the sol. As they went, he peered discreetly into the alleyways that pawed out with increasingly vile smells, hung with cabling and networks of industrial bins crawling with shadows, and found the impression that they were staring back. 

‘Jim, are you sure we can trust this merchant?’ McCoy asked, leaning close so he could be heard.

‘He’s been cleared.’

‘Well, this place reminds me of holos made in New York after WWIII.’

He hummed in agreement, looking back to make sure everyone was still on him, Scott beside Spock and Vlahos bringing up the rear. A hot streak of shame ran his gut when Spock’s eyes collided with his, his scent and the form of his shoulders were still immediate to him, words bitter in his mouth. Spock shot his head away, examining something on the far side, his dark hair gone midnight in the wet and clinging to his forehead in disordered strains. Kirk fought himself and lost and got up for round two and surrendered to the fact that he had feelings for Spock, but what was now at risk wasn't an _if_ about tenderness and sex and some imagined future; but their friendship, his command and the Enterprise. They had to speak, properly, as soon as they were back on board. 

As they went, shoulders butted them and carved their group into pieces, slowing progress. The proportion of Humans to all other species was drastically lower than any other city he had ever set foot in. In walking a block, they only saw three other Humans, and even then it was possible that under their hats and gear they were Deltans or Vulcans. There were many more Klingons and Orions, and a multitude of peoples Kirk had hardly encountered more than once in all his travels. 

‘I can see why this place has got a reputation,’ McCoy said, dodging away from a quarrelling pair of shopkeepers. ‘I’ll bet you could find everything from tribbles to just about any weapon walking through this bazaar.’ 

‘And those would be the mild sales,’ Kirk answered, glancing at the barred doors of pleasure houses, ticker-taped by lurid pink neon.

His shoulder was suddenly thrown by a steel-trap, shucking him backwards into Spock. He caught him and steadied him onto his feet by his sides, and the resurging notion of his hands and shock pushed Kirk out of his head for a couple of seconds. In another moment he realised a Klingon had shouldered him without breaking stride, as he passed, he looked over his shoulder and gave him a full, dark look, ridges in his face tightening. Those eyes burned into him; something foretold and vast and full in them. _De Ja Vu_ , maybe. One of the last unexplainable concepts humanity had left. He felt electric, an exposed wire, drops landing on him, dripping overhead. 

‘Are you alright?’ McCoy patted his shoulder, going on his toes to see the culprit. 

‘I’m fine,’ he said, rubbing his shoulder. The others had gathered around him, and their knot became a stone in the stream of foot-traffic. Spock released him gently and turned away, tracking the Klingon intensely. 

‘We have to keep moving,’ Kirk said. McCoy’s medical tricorder hovered to the side, ‘Didn’t I say I was fine, Bones?’

‘Fine isn’t a medical word, Jim,’ he said, reading the device quickly, ‘But you’re okay.’

The crowds ebbed as they got closer to the base, so much that they could walk blocks at a time without seeing other people. There were no markets on this side of town, flat grey blocks, convenience stores that were stocked to the gills with undefinables and two or three bistro-style places, with patrons holding steaming cups between their hands. On more than one occasion, they looked up and followed the Humans with their eyes. In spite of what Spock had said a single Vulcan didn’t make much difference in helping them blend in. Kirk assumed that this was the business sector, but even so, several alleyways they passed had doors allotted into their sides and manned by security guards in all black, hands clasped, shoulders thrown, impervious to the rain falling on them. 

‘We’re approaching the base to our left,’ Spock said, moving ahead of the group.

Inside it was hot and dry, and the walls and floors were all pseudo-marbled stone buffed to shine. They tracked water in, and it dried almost immediately on heated tiling. In the vast brutalist structure there was little more than a few odd plants in the corners, and the ceiling was vaulted by three floors, impeccable and airtight. Though he couldn’t see any, there were most certainly security cameras trained on them. He didn’t doubt that they knew everything about them already, histories and bodies both. There were a set of white lift doors in a short corridor, and the reception to their left in the main hall, a seating area in front of it. The corridor was guarded by a Human man, standing at attention in a strange, forest green uniform with no insignia on the breast. A Vulcan was at the reception in robes of similar colour. No insignia and no words until Kirk approached her desk, the others remained close in a loose unit. He held his hand up in a ta’al, but she didn’t return it, and he dropped his hands on the stone edge of her desk gently. 

‘Good afternoon, I’m Captain James Kirk of the USS Enterprise, we’re here to meet with Kerrius,’ he said, voice echoing, coming back even though he wasn’t speaking very loudly.

She nodded, but her eyes gravitated to Spock, and it was to him that she offered a ta’al and spoke, ’Kerrius is expecting you.’

Kirk looked between them, Spock held his hand up in greeting, but he looked to his Captain in deference. He gave a brief nod. He was beginning to understand how little Starfleet mattered in this corner of the world, how armless the Federation was, and impervious all other lifeforms to it. Race relations did not seem nuanced and inter-related like on Federation planets, and materiality, an old human friend, was alive and well. 

‘When can we expect to see him?’ Spock asked, clasping his hands behind the small of his back. 

She consulted her computer, ‘He is available now if you’ll move through security. His office is on the thirty-second floor.’

Spock nodded and looked at them. Kirk led them on toward the guard, who withdrew a thin instrument, and waved it from a foot above his head down to the ground. Then he scanned McCoy, and it wasn’t until he reached Scott that the device whistled. He checked the reading. 

‘May I collect your phaser, sir?’ he asked. ‘They will be returned to you when you leave the building.’

Scott frowned, looking over to Kirk and McCoy, and McCoy looked at Kirk, but he didn’t look back. Scott reached into his coat and withdrew the phaser, handing it to the guard. Kirk kept his face impassable as the guard scanned Spock and asked for his phaser and went onto Vlahos without comment. 

‘You may pass through,’ he waved them on.

The lift doors slid open for them, and they went in, it was remotely controlled and had no buttons, just a sombre flickering of numbers where side panels usually were. As soon as the door closed, Kirk, McCoy and Vlahos started patting themselves down. All their phasers were gone, but they had held onto their communicators. 

‘I don’t understand,’ McCoy muttered, staring up with his hands arrested on his chest, he checked inside his pockets, ‘it was attached to my belt under my damn coat.’

Kirk exhaled grimly and rubbed his face, ‘No doubt about it, Bones,’ he said. ‘and if it weren’t so humiliating it would be impressive — we’ve been pick-pocketed.’

‘So why wasn’t Spock, or Scotty?’

‘I believe there was an element of chance, Doctor,’ Spock said, ‘Engineer Scott and myself were fortunate not to cross paths with pickpockets. I was also highly aware of passing persons, so I was more wary of any incidental contact.’

'And if I’m not mistaken, you also happen to be Vulcan,’ McCoy said, voice brittle and eyes cutting, ‘Which works out nicely again, doesn’t it.’

Spock’s voice dipped, chin tilting up, ‘Doctor, if Vulcan operations are more numerous on this planet, it’s through no fault of mine. Once again, you have a talent for stating the obvious.’

'The fact that you seem to forget the human half of you whenever it suits you is equally obvious.’

‘That’s enough Bones,’ Kirk’s voice was coarse, and McCoy’s words had brought back his own words to Spock to mind. Shame whipped him around the ears, ‘Lieutenant Vlahos, please make sure to log the phasers as stolen, and write up a report.’

‘Yes, Sir.’

Kirk sensed more than the typical argumentative structure of their relationship at work. It seemed that at every turn, the command team was coming loose. He squared his shoulders against the notion, no time, no time. 

The lift doors slid out. The offices were as plain and minimalistic as the reception hall, open planned and as large, the only difference was that the ceiling was slightly lower. Kirk realised why it had taken so long to get up here in the lift, what was called thirty-two stories was actually nearly seventy or so. It didn’t take long for them to see Kerrius, standing in the corner, overlooking several boxes, two of them taller and as wide as he was. He was dwarfed beside them, absorbed in a PADD, stylus flickering vertically down the page. He put the PADD on top of one of the boxes and approached them in measured strides. Kirk had the impression of a much older, well-established man, perhaps somewhat departed from the strictures of planetside Vulcan but was no less proper. No less logical. After all, it was most likely his logic that had ensured his business after so many years in cutthroat quadrants and shoulder to shoulder with pirates and traffickers. 

‘Hello, Captain,’ he said, stepping to them and they to him, to meet in the middle of the stark, empty space, ‘I trust your short walk through Rotundas was not onerous.’

‘No more than expected,’ Kirk said, holding up the ta’al. Kerrius responded smoothly in kind and led them through to the assembly of long white lounges and armchairs in front of the stone desk, on top of it a lamp, a small meditation pot like the one Kirk had seen in Spock’s quarters. 

‘Please have a seat,’ he said and waited until they were all down before he sat forward in an armchair to the back, a proverbial head of a table with Kirk by his left, on a lounge shared with McCoy. Kerrius took a moment to look at each of them in a broad sweep, lingering lastly on Spock with a certain end of displeasure twisting on his brow. Strange. 

‘Captain, I have been in contact with your communications officer,’ he said, his voice was lilting and arresting. There was an ease to it that was almost expressive, but not emotional. Vulcan charm, ’I have all the components you need, but I hope you can understand why I wanted to meet with you in person to finalise the sale.’

‘Yes,’ Kirk said, ‘I think that’s mutual in our lines of work — security and trust.’

Kerrius inclined his head, ‘the components were initially standard items issued by Starfleet for the NCC-Farragut, a ship with which I understand you served aboard — however, when the Farragut’s assignment ended abruptly, the parts were no longer required. Starfleet could make use of them, but all ships in commission were well resourced, and I had a fortunate opportunity to acquire them through a scientific auction held on Vulcan.’

The irony flip-flopped in Kirk’s gut, and he nodded as smoothly as he could. Spock’s eyes flickered to him, an end of worry in the darkness and care he felt he didn’t deserve but was grateful for. For the first time since Spock had departed his quarters, he thought they could weather the incident. They could weather the things they’d said to one another even if it meant burying certain parts of themselves. 

‘Fortunate for us too,’ Scott said, ‘but for them to run for the Enterprise, they’ll need some adjustments and system updates.’

‘Of which, I am sure you are highly capable, Engineer Scott,’ Kerrius acquiesced calmly, ‘You are well-lauded amongst those of us who must caretake our own ships.’

’Kerrius,’ Spock said, expression arrested in curiosity. The merchant looked at him with a delay, neck going stiff, ‘While I understand that there is some circulation in the market for Starfleet issue parts, there are strict regulations about who can possess them and their sale. May I ask what you sought to achieve when you acquired them? Typically, there would be no resell value except in rare cases - when Starfleet is ironically the customer.’

‘Some of the information is of course classified,’ Kerrius began, eyes travelling away from Spock, to address Scott and Kirk, ‘But I was fascinated by their remarkable engineering, different to a Vulcan vessel, or any others in or out of the Federation. It was no consequence to me if I could not resell them. Starfleet knew that I could be trusted with them as a private proprietor, given my track record. I’m sure you have all grasped by now that Farius Prime is not a friend of the Federation and perhaps finds alliance with the Klingon Empire for nothing if not proximity. Many other planets near the neutral zone are in the same state, quietly proliferated in spite of treaties because of sophisticated smuggling operations. The agreement I signed with Starfleet also required your visit.’

‘A logical precaution,’ Spock replied.

Scott said, ‘I need to spend some time checking the components before we can beam them aboard if you don’t mind.’

‘Not at all,’ he answered and stood as Scott did. ‘If you make your way to the thirty-third floor, you will find the components. I have taken the liberty of having them unpacked and laid out for your inspection. They will, of course, have to be transported to our verified export hangar before they can be beamed up by the Enterprise, you may follow their entire journey.’

‘Excellent should take no more than a couple of hours, Sir,’ Scott began to move off, ‘Lieutenant, with me. Thank you.’

Kerrius nodded politely and did not sit down again until the lift doors closed on Scott and Vlahos. They all watched them go, their footsteps echoing two-fold in the cavernous space. 

‘Captain, you and the rest of your team are welcome to wait for them here,’ he said, ‘However, you cannot beam aboard from here. There are magnetic fields in place all over Rotundas to limit unauthorised activity, so you must return to a transporter station.

‘Thank you, but I think we might head out to see more of the city before we leave,’ Kirk said, he stood and so did McCoy and Spock. ‘But before we go…about the smuggling operations — are they operating to circumvent the neutral zone?’

‘At times,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘there are certain exports and imports that the Klingons have found they cannot acquire within their own boundaries. There are merchants, unlike myself, who are quite at ease with helping them unscrupulously. Planets that have capitalist socio-economic systems have higher activity.’

‘And what are they moving?’ he asked, frowning to himself. 

‘Orion slaves, weaponry, machining and ship components,’ he said. ‘And passengers, at times.’

‘Is there a significant trend as to who creates the technology and who consumes it?’ Spock asked.

‘Certainly, Romulans are well known to have innovated new items, and Klingons are their natural customers,’ he said, and again he didn’t quite look at Spock. Kirk realised the pattern was too obvious and intended to be a throwaway social misdemeanour. 

‘Wait, wait — these passengers,’ McCoy held up a hand, ‘Did you mean people are voluntarily risking their necks to cross that line?’ 

‘In these cases, the reward outweighs the risk,’ he said, ‘for certain mining operations, as well as other lesser-known works the Klingons employ other species. The compensation is quite high.’

‘And here I thought we’d shot greed in the foot,’ McCoy said, shaking his head. 

‘While the philosophies of Earth and most other Federation planets have foregone materiality indeed, the rest of the galaxy is not so fortunate,’ he said, ‘there are still economies that are hugely important to their main players. Vying for power, wealth, and at times political beliefs they would like to see enacted.’

‘You mean against the Federation?’

‘The Federation and others,’ he said, ‘Though it is often so volatile and unpredictable an opportunity that no one can remain atop long enough to carry out anything conclusive. Hence the relative peace.’

‘Relative peace…’ McCoy said, ‘you mean besides the slavery, and greed and cutthroat politics?’

‘It is tenacious,’ Kerrius agreed calmly, ‘But as I have read, your own Earth went through many, many more turns of violence and disorder to reach where it is now. As did Vulcan.’

The silence pervaded for a long time, Kirk tried to grapple with the information, but he knew it was too big a problem for one ship. And as troubling as it was, it wasn’t in their directive. As much as he wanted someone to do something, he reminded himself that Starfleet wasn’t a tool to police activities, no matter how reprehensible, their meddling wouldn’t be ethical, or in certain cases any more help than it would be harmful. And they couldn't start a war because of some mercantile misnomers. Kerrius seemed to understand, and his operation as a merchant appeared to be hinged on a philosophy of non-interference. 

‘We’ve taken up enough of your time,’ Kirk said, clearing his throat, ‘Thank you.’

‘You’re quite welcome, Captain,’ he said, ‘I trust the components will allow you to return to your mission in a timely manner. Live long and prosper.’

‘Live long and prosper,’ they all replied in a muted chorus. 

Kirk wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw some amusement on Kerrius’ face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again I'm really out here thinking 6K is acceptable for one chapter in the first draft and then having to cut it in half..smh. Anyway, in summary: the next chapter coming in a couple of days.


	9. Command Blues

By the time they stepped out, the rain had slowed to disparate drops, echoing off ledges and onto the concrete or tiled grounds. Kirk tucked his head under his collar and considered what Kerrius had told them. The bustle that he’d earlier witnessed was reorganised into acts of belligerence, the smuggling trade ties and runs occurring widely and without interruption. Much of it was unseen and unbidden. Tied to economies beyond Starfleet’s tracking or restricted to high clearance rooms where shadow-faced bigwig monitored these events. Yet, for a long time, Kirk had unconsciously swum in-current with the party line that Starfleet was ultimately altruistic and stayed out of covert operations. It was nearly impossible that they were the first to stumble across this.

‘This is a whole lot of trouble,’ McCoy said after an extended silence. Kirk and Spock turned to him, and the three of them stood in the empty sidewalk. Distantly, there was the sound of Rotundas’ bustling and teeming and echoes of an underbelly filled with voices and industrial percussion. 

He nodded thoughtfully, 'assuming Kerrius didn’t reveal everything, it’s probably even worse.’ 

‘And what do you think Starfleet is going to do about it once you send the log?’ McCoy asked, crossing his arms. ‘Is one merchant’s personal experience enough to start an investigation?’

‘That’s beside the point,’ he rubbed his chin and realised his hand was partially numb with cold and that he’d forgotten to shave before leaving the ship. ‘They might not think that it’s their place to do anything. Or our’s for that matter. Not without knowing how far-spread the situation is.’

‘You are quite correct, Captain,’ Spock nodded, ‘it would appear that all of these events are out of our purview.’

‘Hell, just about half the things we deal with aren’t in our control,’ McCoy frowned, voice gaining an edge, ‘But we know where it’s happening now, even if we could stop a handful of people from being handled like cargo—‘

‘Doctor McCoy, it is deeply emotionalist of you to assume who the victims and perpetrators are, not to mention the impact on the homeworld of those involved. It is unclear what Starfleet may achieve by interfering,’ Spock interrupted. His jaw was stiff with the rebuttal, ‘We were already aware of the Orion slave trade, and the implications of Klingon smuggling routes. Kerrius provided little which we did not already suspect—‘

‘Enough, Spock,’ McCoy snapped. His eyes flared with a line of electricity, pale and sightless in rage, ‘Spare me your damn logic and reason, I’ve had just enough of it to last me a lifetime.’

Before Kirk could intercede, McCoy turned on his heel in the direction they had come from, head bowed in the wind and steps jerking and sharp with irritation. A tendon in Spock’s jaw clenched and unclenched as he watched him travel, hands swept behind his back. 

‘What is going on?’ Kirk asked, voice gruff, looking from Spock to McCoy’s receding back, then again, ‘Spock?’

‘The Doctor and I often have fundamental disagreements,’ he said without meeting his eyes.

There was a rising impulse in him to reach out and grab Spock’s arm to reassure himself, but he crushed it in his palm. He looked the way McCoy had gone, he had slowed, but he hadn’t stopped. Something seemed to have become displaced without his notice, something significant and looming had begun that he could not name, or see the scale of. McCoy and Spock had always had disagreements, but not like this. He and Spock had hardly ever disagreed, but it had never escalated. On an aberrant wave of shame, came their own incident in his quarters; the scent of Spock, sharp and woodsy and inalienable in the crook of his neck, still messing with his head. Over the years it had become lodged in some corner of his mind. And Kirk had believed it so securely locked away, that when it flooded out with a vengeance, he'd nearly drowned in the desire to be infinitely closer. That was its own threat to his command. To their team. With the end of the five-year mission in sight, Starfleet was sharking for reasons to separate them and multiply the staying power of their successes. Breaking the team into parts of the whole and hoping each branch would flower into its own tree. 

‘I will attempt to resolve the issue with Doctor McCoy,’ Spock said calmly after a moment, turning a dispassionate and neutral expression to him. ‘I apologise for impeding our work.’

He began to move, and Kirk spoke, ‘we’ll deal with it when we get back to the ship. You’d better let Bones blow off some steam.’

‘In that case, I had intended to research the Romulan spyware in my possession. I believe there may be several good sources here,’ Spock turned partway, ‘May I rendezvous with you and the Doctor on the ship, Captain?’

_Captain_ …and now why did it suddenly feel like the decorum had stiffened and tightened into a backhand, belaying him, pushing him. Pushing him away when Kirk didn’t want to be pushed, just when he had recognised his own one step forward and two back approaches. He took a short breath, watching the light shine off the strands of Spock’s dark hair, the dampness of his collar from the rain, those swept and dark brows and hiding eyes. To take the risk that Spock may leave because he didn’t want him, didn’t need him - was preferable to never knowing, or letting Starfleet make the decision. 

‘Captain?’ Spock’s voice was a little softer, meeting his eyes again. 

‘Ah, yes, Mr Spock,’ he said, smiling even though he had to calculate it, couldn’t feel it, ‘you’re still investigating that?’

‘It seems that its origins may have just become relevant to our current objective.’

‘Weren’t you of the opinion that this _isn’t_ our responsibility?’

‘Partially. It’s not entirely our responsibility or potentially solvable without systematic change,’ he said, ‘More information may be useful should the situation escalate.’

‘Alright, that’s a smart bet,’ he said, ‘Check-in every thirty minutes.’

He looked down the street, McCoy had stopped on the corner, arms hitched on his hips as he stared at the ground, ‘If you can’t reach us, beam up immediately.’

Spock nodded and turned to leave. He’d gone a few steps when the words shot out of Kirk, and he was helpless to stop them, ‘Be careful, Spock.’

Again he paused and turned, mouth quirking but in which direction Kirk couldn’t be sure, to what end he didn’t want to guess. 

‘And you, Captain.’

His coattails curled and cut behind him, a mass of darkness and light swinging through and through as he sped up. Kirk turned back too. 

When he reached McCoy, he seemed considerably calmer.

‘Look, I’m sorry Jim, I didn’t—’

‘It’s alright, Bones,’ he said, ‘We’ll talk about it later. Just lucky you two didn’t get into it in front of Kerrius, or he’d have taken back his components.’

McCoy chuckled, ‘Scotty would’ve had a fit.’

‘I may have joined him,’ Kirk shook his head. He looked around them, the abandoned buildings were all there was. He didn’t cherish going back into the hotpot of the city just yet. ’What now?’ 

'Where did Spock go?’ 

‘He wanted to investigate that spyware device that’s making the rounds,’ he said.

‘Well, I’d like to investigate a warm drink if you don’t mind. Before we head back and I get my tricorder stolen.’

Kirk laughed softly, ‘good idea.’

* * *

As they entered the bistro, a whistling let out, and an Orion woman behind the counter looked at them and looked away to pour coffee for someone sitting alone. Kirk shrugged, regardless of what they did there wasn't anything close to amicability on this planet for them. Presently that would cut it. They took a corner stall, lit by a single bell lamp, cluttered with coffee cups and ringed with brown stains on some grey sub-linoleum. It was dismal, to sit in the pockmarked booth and feel the cold biting hard from unsealed gaps in the windows. 

‘I can’t believe what just happened,’ McCoy murmured, taking off his coat off and draping it beside him. He leaned back into the cushions.

‘Oh no?’ Kirk asked, he smiled thinly, scratching his jaw, ‘didn’t you ever think that with all the arguing you two do it’d end up exploding at some point?’ 

McCoy shrugged, ‘would’ve liked to think I was more professional. Expected Spock was.’

‘It’s been a rough couple of weeks, Bones,’ he said.

‘But isn’t he always going on about being emotionless?’ he asked.

He didn’t have an answer to that. Spock always prided himself on the finer points of being Vulcan, the control and the problem-solving. Everything, everything from his smallest action to the most exceptional. So, if Spock said he was logical, that he didn’t feel emotions or have wants beyond absolute necessities, then Kirk saw it as his own personal duty to take him at his word. To view it as real in spite of any evidence. All evidence. A double lie he told himself for the sake of Spock, he presumed. Indeed, in the early days, he’d tried to eke out emotional responses from him, asking the validity of emotion in any given situation, but Spock hadn’t relented even when he had to omit the truth. So Kirk had let him be and swallowed the lie. 

McCoy reached out and grasped his arm, ‘Look, I know it ain’t optimal for a command crew to be fighting among themselves. But there are times when I really can’t tell what compels him if he’s on Starfleet’s side or the Enterprise’s.’

Something cold tipped over Kirk. He knew what McCoy was really saying, he’d heard it on occasion in as many words from outsiders, other Captains he’d met. People who had assumed that Spock was a hindrance more than a help.

‘ _We_ are Starfleet, Bones,’ he said, finding the Doctor’s eyes, ‘and I don’t think what compels Spock really matters. Even though you know as well as I do he’s nearly given his life for that ship ten times over, and I suspect he’d do again in a second.’

McCoy straightened up, arms crossed again and hands gripping the basins of his elbows tightly, ‘the ship, right,’ he repeated, nodding pensively, looking down. Kirk couldn’t discern if what he’d said had sunk or sunk in. He seemed to have a troubled riff in mind, a set of notions that were setting things askew. Try as he might he couldn't’ read him this time. 

‘Coffee?’ the waitress came up to their table and cleared the dirty cups and gave them fresh ones. She held out a pot, motioning to them, red hair spilling from under her uniform cap, eyes iridescent. Bones smiled and said yes and thank you, and Kirk just felt tired and pushed his cup forward and thanked her when she poured. As she poured, the comm chirped with the first check-in message from Spock, _all is well._

‘Is there any pie around here?’ McCoy asked before taking a sip. 

‘Apple or cherry?’ she asked. 

‘Would you look at that,’ McCoy said, grinning over at him before looking up, ‘A slice of each, I’ve had a hankering.’

‘It is synthesised,’ her eyebrows shot up at his enthusiasm. And that seemed to kill it. 

‘Just apple, then.’

‘What compelled you?’ Kirk chuckled, ‘we’ve seen maybe three other Humans on this planet.’

‘They could like pie,’ he said. ‘I think you’re severely underestimating pie, Jim.’

He laughed again, leaning back a little easier, ‘I think you miss home.’

‘Yeah,’ McCoy nodded wistfully, ‘Not gonna deny that. I miss having some real sun, knowing just by looking up when the day’s gonna end. _The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and —‘_

_‘—dark-coloured sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn…_ ’ Kirk finished for him, staring into the dark depths of the coffee. When he looked up, there was a small grin on McCoy’s face.

‘I had some extra time thanks to your sickbay rules.’

‘Right,’ he said, ‘And poetry books are always a logical gift.’

‘Bones.’

‘No, no, I’m not saying or asking anything,’ McCoy took another sip, class ring tapping the handle, ‘So, what? You miss home, Jim?’

‘I miss…what is most essentially dirt, Doctor.’

They settled into the thought and drank coffee that was a little poorer than what the Enterprise could synthesise. When McCoy’s pie came, he chipped away at it half-heartedly. The door opened with a short, shrill whistle again. It had started raining, and the Orion newcomers who were wet and shook themselves off and were greeted warmly by name. Two men and woman who led them. She wore a long overcoat and underneath, what could ostensibly be described as battle armour. Her dark hair was pulled back harshly, and the lines of her skull came through her yellow-green skin, even and sculpted. 

Kirk turned to see the male Orions had travelled to the other side, speaking in comfortable tones to the waitress. The woman fixed her eyes on them. When Kirk met her gaze, she flashed a mouthful of white teeth like someone unpracticed in smiling. She started toward them. 

He kept his face impassable, quietening McCoy with a hand on his arm when he started to ask what in the hell was happening and where the one phaser they had was.

She stopped squarely between them in front of the table.

‘Hello,’ Kirk said uncertainly, letting go of McCoy, ‘Can we help you?’ 

The Orion grinned again and forced them further into the booth by leaning forward on her elbows, nearly completely bent over as if she were ready to conspire. 

‘I know you,’ she said, nodding toward Jim. 

‘Really?’ he asked, ‘Are you sure, I have one of those faces.’

‘No, you don’t,’ she tilted her head to the side, her voice was only semi-accented, ‘in fact, Captain Kirk, you have the opposite of _one of those faces_.’ 

‘I don’t know who this Kirk is,’ he said, ‘but it’s not me.’

She switched to look at McCoy before he could finish talking, and Kirk knew there would be no convincing her otherwise.

‘You,’ she said, ‘On the other hand, I don’t know.’ 

McCoy sat a little straighter and glanced at Kirk. 

‘Me? I'm Trelane Mudd,’ he said, inclining his head, ‘who are you meant to be?’ 

She pulled at the bottom of her vest before sliding in beside McCoy, facing Kirk. He didn’t falter in staring back, lacing his fingers in front of him on the table. 

‘Do I looked like an idiot, Captain Kirk?’ her tongue caught on a hard ‘R’ as it had before. 

‘Well I don’t know,’ he said, ‘I find looks can be deceiving most of the time.’

She acquiesced with a shrug, smiling, ‘the point I make is this; all the idiots out on the street may not recognise you because you’re not wearing a bright gold shirt and jogging from place to place in your little boots. But I’m not so easy.’

‘You just wanted a meet and greet?’ he asked, ‘or is there some business you have with us.’

She tutted, crossing her arms and glancing at McCoy, then back ‘Well, I wanted to get the measure of the man behind the stories and rumours. To make a good comparison, you _are_ certainly famous by now. And I’d hope, too smart not to know about it, but again — looks can be deceiving.’

Kirk held out his hands, chest out and smiling thinly, ‘take a good look, then. And if you’re quite finished —’

‘No,’ she said firmly, and the strange flirtatious and nebulous effect cut out. The phaser was too far behind his back, and her's was at her hip, no doubt cruder in getting the job done. Slow, botched death in an ill-lit corner of a bistro on a deep-space salvage assignment was less than appetising to Kirk. 

‘At least even the ground,’ he said, ‘What’s your name?’

‘Nessa,’ she replied, ‘I’m a merchant vessel Captain. In another world, we could have been colleagues.’

‘I think there are few realities where a spaceship has two Captains.’

‘The way Starfleet runs its operations, that isn’t so far fetched,’ she said. Her edging grin returned, ‘the way you all conduct yourselves, I think anyone would be forgiven to think rank is just a formality.’ 

‘What’s your point?’

‘Let me reset,’ she said, looking up to the ceiling as if she was solving a problem or recalling a memory. ‘I transport a lot of materials,’ setting her eyes dead into his, ‘that I believe you would be deeply interested in. _Fascinated_ by, even.’

Kirk froze for a second at the word, her deliberate enunciation. Over the years, a lot of things had been speculated or miscast about them. Still, out of the declassified reports, Spock’s wording had found a niche. And that word had become ceaselessly attached to him. Kirk unclipped his comm from his belt, but when he brought it up, she had drawn a phaser. It was three times the sizes of his, ridden with open wiring and a transparent chamber that showed the fission mechanism. He gingerly held the comm between his thumb and forefinger. 

‘I just need to make a call.'

She thought about it, face turning to ease again, she holstered her phaser and nodded. 

Kirk swallowed slowly and took a long moment to break eye contact with her, he flipped open his comm.

'Mr Spock, come in,’ he called over the channel. There was an extended instance of silence, and he looked at McCoy worriedly.

The line finally crackled, ‘Spock here.’

‘Are you alright?’ 

‘Yes, I’m fine, Captain,’ he said, then, ‘There are still five minutes before I send my scheduled check-in message.’

‘Well, are you quite done on the planet surface?’ he asked, ‘Your trip.’

‘Nearly,’ and Spock seemed to pause and consider something else, he must’ve read Kirk’s tone or the veiled words, ‘Do you require assistance?’

‘Report back to the ship at once. Kirk out.’

He flipped the comm shut, but kept it pressed in his palm. 

‘I’d have to be pretty stupid to capture your First Officer and think I’d get away with it,’ Nessa rolled her eyes, ‘but then again I don’t blame you for being on-edge after that debris storm you endured.’

Kirk tried to control his breathing, in and out. How did she know? How could she possibly? 

‘That’s enough,’ he leaned back and after a second smiled a hard, insincere smile of a politician, ‘I’m ‘afraid we have to go now.’

‘No problem,’ she shrugged, then stared into him, through him. Kirk felt she could discern the atoms he was made of by just staring, ‘I have found out what I needed to know.’

‘And what was that?’ 

She stood up, thumbs hitched into her belt, eyes on him again. She examined his face, brow, cheeks, chin, mouth, hair and ears. He was being catalogued. 

‘I found out the myth is mostly the man,’ she said, ‘I’m good at telling that kind of thing, I have a knack — and I have also found out that I may have picked the winning side, Captain Kirk. And it is tragically thanks to you, and your First Officer — even Starfleet.’

‘I don’t find riddles very useful.’

‘No?’ she murmured thoughtfully, ‘Ok, Captain,’ she reached into her coat and pulled out a pencil stub, then reached over them for a napkin. She spoke as she began writing down numbers and letters in a sequence of a ship’s comm channel, ‘I like to win. Regardless. I go where I think the advantage is, that’s how we survive out here.’

She slid the napkin to him, ‘if you decide you’d like to take an active interest in winning.’ 

Nessa saluted them loosely, before moving away. They watched her return to the other side of the bistro and join the booth her companions were in. She said something, and they all chuckled and glanced at them, then engaged within themselves. 

‘You okay, Bones?’

‘I think I should be the one asking that,’ he said. 

‘Let’s get out of here before she comes up with something else,’ he said, putting down paper per diem they’d been dealt for Farius Prime on the table. He slid the napkin and tucked it into his breast pocket. 

They stood for a second on the pavement and oriented themselves before Kirk started walking, and McCoy followed. There were things she shouldn’t have known, something that didn’t make sense and yet, had been spoken rationally…tauntingly, he realised.

He was about to speak when McCoy said, ‘what did she mean by _"the winning side"_?’ 

‘I don’t know,’ Kirk said, putting his hands in his pockets. 

‘I’m more interested about the breach, not the mumbo-jumbo,’ he said, tucking the comm away, and glancing up at Bones. Kirk thought about the route and began moving a street adjacent to the worst of the foot traffic, he wasn’t in the mood to be trampled by Klingons, ‘how did she know about debris storm.’

'She must’ve just read the article,’ he said, eyes riveted to the concrete, stopping automatically when Kirk did and looking up at him. A few people passed them, a motley crowd, all of them.

‘What article?’

‘The cadet paper, the transcript and story of the debris—’ His throat worked a swallow, and his eyes became infinitely tired all at once, ‘You don’t know yet, do you?’

‘Know?’ he asked, gripping the Doctor’s shoulder in frustration, ‘know what?’

'When Lieutenant Pavao passed out on the Bridge during the storm, she accidentally switched off the subspace encryptor, and some Starfleet cadets on Relva got on the channel and heard everything. So, they wrote an article, and typed up the transcript and put it in a publication, and I suppose it wouldn’t be considered their fault—’

‘—because the channel was left open,’ Kirk said, hand dropping. He felt numb, and his mouth had suddenly gone board dry.

‘We only found out when Chekov stumbled across it a couple of hours before we beamed down…Spock wanted to tell you — but I made a recommendation that he shouldn’t until we’d left Farius Prime. All this time I thought he already had, he must have changed his mind.’

‘So you let me compromise my command?’

‘I didn’t think you could handle it after so much happening in such a short time.’

‘Was that your medical, professional recommendation, Doctor?’ he spat, cutting through with such force that the thickening crowd parted for them. 

They couldn’t discuss it here, not with so many people around and McCoy seemed to know better than to try. They walked with a single-minded force, propelling both forward and against one another. Withholding information like that had been something they’d never done before. From his side, it felt conspiratorial. McCoy had always had the tendency to make similar decisions, right or wrong. But Spock never had, and that was the worse of it. An hour ago, what had seemed to be a minimal misstep in command was beginning to look like a yawning vacuum, tearing open and wider by the second and swallowing everything. They hit the crowded centre-lane, and the transportation cube came into view. There was a short queue as they logged a request. It was put through to the Enterprise. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaay sorry this is late! Thanks for reading, reader!  
> I love a big bowl of constructive criticism if anyone's got some ✌🏽


	10. Half-Finished Bridge

‘Incoming message from Starfleet Command, Admiral Komack.’

‘Hold it. I’ll be in touch shortly.’

’It’s flagged as urgent.’

‘Hold it, Lieutenant.’

‘Yes, Captain.’

He turned to leave, but lingered on his heel, ’The second Mr Spock beams up, send him to briefing room two.’

Saying his name made a low trill of anger rise in him, stretching into a narrow line with confusion. 

‘We received confirmation from the transport officer five minutes ago.’

‘He’s onboard?’

‘Not yet, there’s traffic in the queue.’

‘Keep me updated. Sulu report.’

‘Standard orbit, Captain. Everything is functioning routinely.’

‘Mr Scott and Vlahos have beamed aboard with the components from Kerrius’ hangar.’

Kirk stared into the main view. Farius Prime was in tow, and few dozen other ships hovered in the haze. Some of them looked little more than scrapped metal sewn together with hopes and wishes, and he wanted so much to stop imagining what could lay in their bellies. The air on the bridge became tepid and suffocating as he waited for Uhura’s next update. He peeled out of his civilian coat and lay it in the conn chair. The fleece layer under it was still choking him out. The nominal humming of the bridge phased in and out. Uhura had tilted toward her earpiece, two manicured fingers pressed in as she switched through channels. 

Kirk’s arm, still in the last few days of its mend, sang like metal in the forge. The lift doors opened in a suck. McCoy stepped out in his uniform, hair tousled from changing hurriedly, and behind him came Yeoman Rand. The Doctor avoided his eyes as Kirk stepped up to meet him.

‘What’s going on?’ McCoy asked, ‘I was waiting in the briefing room—‘

Uhura’s hand shot up. Her index finger tremored, and she shifted her shoulders as if combatting a spasm of nerves. Kirk was vaguely aware of Rand collecting his coat and standing by the conn, spectating. 

‘There’s been an argument,’ Uhura's voice dropped into the void. She turned to them, ‘a conflict— the controller called law enforcement, and then he switched on the encryptor.’

‘Jim, Spock is—‘

‘—I’m fully aware, Bones.’ 

‘Transports have been delayed until further notice.’

‘All stations?’ 

‘I’ll check, just a second…no — the next one closest to Mr Spock’s location is eight kilometres away — it’s still operational.’

‘We can’t get to him in time,’ McCoy shook his head.

‘Open a comm to Spock, now.’

Her hands pinballed around the console, tuning, then switching on the channel. She indicated it with a nod.

‘Mr Spock, come in.’

There was nothing, and Kirk fell into the chasmic arms of the silence. He cut himself loose by repeating his name.

‘C-Captain,’ there was distortion on the channel, melding with the rough crawl of indetermined clamour. Uhura moved, attempting to clean up the audio. 

‘Are you alright? What’s happening?’ 

‘There has been some agitation around the station.’

‘Get out of there,’ he said, ’Now. Get to the next station—Uhura?’

‘Approximately eight kilometres Mr Spock, north-west.’ 

The line cut. 

‘What happened?’

‘They must have activated an ionic field to deter communication. Nothing emitted off-planet will get through,’ she said, eyes running rapidly.

‘In case whoever’s fighting calls for backup,’ he rubbed his chin, the edge of his fingers catching on stubble he’d forgotten was there. 

Turning on the spot, he reached out to Rand for his coat, and she handed it over. Kirk shook it inside-out, he gutted the lining for the inside pocket. His hand numbly closed around the napkin and he extracted it, careful not to crush it, or smudge the digits. McCoy’s eyes follow his hand. It was the last resort. It had to be. He gave the coat back to Rand and thanked her. She promptly left the bridge, doe-eyes skidding away from his closed fist.

‘Sir, Admiral Komack is messaging again.’

‘Drop the line, Lieutenant.’

‘Sir…that’s against protocol.’

‘I know the protocol, blacklist HQ.’

‘Jim, you can’t do that! They’ll take it as evidence!’ McCoy said, face twisted with concern. 

‘It’s not a priority,’ the napkin in his palm had begun to itch. He took a breath and filtered through his options. He dismissed a majority of them, leaving two; he either went after Spock in a shuttle-craft, or he made the call. Without the ship able to achieve full warp, it would be edging madness for him to leave the bridge. He could feel McCoy’s tension radiating somewhere behind him. Sulu turned back anxiously, exchanging eyes with Chekov, whose thin knee had started hopping in errant beats.

Kirk sat down, hands firm on the sides. He put in a yellow alert. 

‘Attention crew, there is escalating unrest on Farius Prime,’ he said over the shipwide channel. ‘Yellow alert is now in place, keep your eyes and ears open for any unusual activity.’

He cut the comm, scratching the corner of his brow with a thumb ‘What’s our shield capacity?’

‘The repairs haven’t gone far, Sir,’ Chekov said, ‘Maybe forty percent.’

‘Engage them.’

McCoy stepped up to his left, leaning on the arm of the chair. His breath clipped the side of Kirk’s neck ‘Even if Spock reaches the next station, he won’t be able to beam up.’

‘It’ll take him at least forty-five minutes to get there,’ he glanced at the chronometer, ‘we’ll give him a window of fifteen minutes once there’s been enough time for him to move.’

‘And after that?’ McCoy snapped.

Kirk spun, and he felt a flame rearing in him, ‘Then I’ll find another way. Report to sickbay, Doctor.’ 

McCoy’s eyes blazed. He twisted away, rushing the stairs and into the lift. Kirk had one last impression of him, guilt rolling around in a shell of rage. If McCoy hadn’t blamed himself before, he blamed himself now. Kirk revelled in his guilt, relished it in the same satisfactory way stone fruit bled juice. The sensation passed as quick as it came, and it drained him. It wasn’t McCoy’s fault. 

‘Lieutenant Chekov, get on the science panel,’ he said, ‘monitor our surrounding parsec for projectiles with a fine tooth-comb every five minutes.’

Chekov looked at him with his big, young eyes and his egg-yellow sleeves rode halfway up his forearms when he stood. He walked over, unsteady a week-old calf and bent over the scanner. Ten minutes later and two reports in - both clean - Scott entered with an engineering rundown. It would be a full week before they were operational again, barring any more incidents. 

‘Can you go any faster?’

‘I cannea tell, Sir,’ he shook his head, ‘It’s a sticky situation this.’

‘Better get to it then.’

Scott moved off with a confirmation. The bridge fell into a lull. Kirk sat tensely and counted the minutes, attempting to run through possible outcomes, potential causes.The doors slid open, McCoy came back. His anger had shed, replaced by a quiet storm was brewing behind his eyes, teeth culled. He stepped up to Kirk’s left again, at his customary, unorthodox perch, and lay a hand on the back of the chair. 

‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly, staring ahead at the main view. ‘I’m just shaken up.’

‘I understand,’ Kirk said. He glanced up at him, trying to muster the last ounce of his optimism.

McCoy met his eyes, he blinked, ‘I’m too hard on his perspective. I never meant to — well, you know.’

‘It’s alright, I know, Bones.’

He couldn’t hold the regret in McCoy’s eyes on top of his own, so he looked back at the main view.As quickly as the flicker of respite had come it was blown out: where the ships had cluttered orbit before, many were moving off. 

‘Report on other vessel activity?.’

‘They’re powering up to space normal speed, and warp factors,’ he said, ‘departing orbit.’

‘How many of them?’

‘A lot of them,’ he cluttered around, glanced back, ‘too many to keep track.’

‘Tracking beams causing this?’

‘No, Sir,’ he said, ‘they’re piloted.’

‘Any patterns, anything that links them?’

‘They’re moving too quickly to compile signatures.’

‘Captain!’ Uhura’s voice cut out through Sulu’s last breath, she whipped around at the console, ‘the rest of the stations have gone.’

‘Gone?’ he half stumbled to his feet, right up to the barrier. 

‘Several had delay signals, but they have powered down indefinitely,’ she caught her breath, ‘an encryption field has been activated planet-wide.’

A smudgy childhood memory welled up in him at the tail end of her voice — apparitions of green in all refracted shades and directions, the air still, pristine. His father straightened the fishing rod in his gloved hands. The water under their little boat moved like a dream, surface swilling darkly with possibility. He was terrified of imagined beasts.

_Count to ten. Focus. It’ll come. Empty your head, Jimmy._

So he counted, back from ten, from the water and the pitching dingy. In his head another sound competed with the numbers, strings plucked at a haunting and hypnotic rate, coming to him from another time and place. There was a note lodged in each number. He couldn’t finish counting.

Kirk blinked hard. Everyone was holding their breath for him. He offered Uhura the napkin, ’Open a channel to this comm, Lieutenant.’

She hesitated before taking it. Her eyes widened when she clocked it as an Orion ship. 

McCoy called, and he looked over at him, ‘you can’t take that back.’

He was right, Captains had been court-marshalled and tucked into mining colonies for less. For a lot less. This would be just a touch away from treason. Kirk looked at him, but he didn’t say anything, thinking, _What would you have me do instead?_ — not as a barb, but as a real question. _Can you tell me how to live without him? Can you cut him out of me, Doctor? These feelings?_ He dropped his eyes, the colour of shame in the rims of his ears, across his cheeks, rashing his neck.

Uhura pulled into the frequency, then signalled him. Kirk took his seat and faced the main view, he pressed the channel open. Captain Nessa sat in a corresponding chair. Cold light shone off her. She seemed as ethereal as people in ancient paintings, hands perched on the sides, overlarge for their cuffs, chunky gold rings on alternating fingers, both hands.

‘This is Captain James Kirk of the Enterprise. We spoke earlier today.’

She smiled catlike, hungry, ‘Yes, you’re hard to forget. I take it you’ve reconsidered my offer.’

‘Not exactly.’

‘Please don’t waste my time,’ she sighed, brushing a thumb over her brow.

‘Your offer isn’t important to me,’ he said, leaning forward on an elbow, ‘But I’m willing to exchange favours. Are you still orbiting Farius Prime?’

‘We are — but favours can be a little steep.’

‘I’ll consider your terms.’

‘I’m not going to pussyfoot. The terms are simple,’ she said, ‘I want protection under Starfleet for my crew and me.’

Kirk drew up straight, sitting tightly. He’d been confident that she was part of the Orion Syndicate, an organisation built around all manner of moving criminal cargo and undertakings. Now, by asking she was risking a penalty of death. What was worse was the thought of what could have brought her to this point.

‘I don’t own Starfleet.’

‘Don’t be so humble; it’s unbecoming. You have enough sway, Captain.’

‘Why do need us all of a sudden? Orion has always pretended to be neutral.’

She bristled at an internal force, and shifted her hands, brought them together. Her rings twanged, her chin jutted crudely, ’I have been a pirate all my life, but I have limits too, limits that run on laws bigger than the syndicate and interests in territory or politics. Something like universal law, if such a thing could exist.’ 

So, she needed him just as much as he needed her, ’What’s happening on Farius Prime?’

‘I have your word?’ her voice dipped to a unique point of vulnerability. 

He found himself nodding. She concurred, glancing to the side of his eye line, monitoring her bridge, ‘The situation on Farius Prime is complicated. The debris storm you recently suffered was one of the milder outcomes — it wasn’t an accident.

It was a targeted attack by a Romulan ship expelling debris on the outswing of warp-speed. You were never the target. Relva VII was — since it's the closest Federation outpost to Farius Prime, and they prefer it dark. Still, you, of course, interrupted the best-laid plans, so you’ve put targets on your backs.’

‘Whose _they_?’ 

‘I’m not going to explain anything else over the transmission. I would prefer to meet in person,’ she tsked him, ‘I’m sure you can understand.’

‘We don’t have time now,’ he shook his head, ‘my First Officer is stranded in Rotundas.’

‘Mr Spock,’ she said. Her lids dropped halfway, a hand curling up to her chin, brushing it by a knuckle, ‘The transportation stations have gone dark..’

‘We know. For how long?’

She ignored the question, ’The only way on and off are shuttlecrafts — which, if they are Starfleet ones, would be immediately shot down. I would have to search for him manually.’

‘You need to contact his comm for locations once you touch down.’

‘Yes, supposedly,’ she said. Her lips thinned, jaw tightening, ‘Are you sure he would answer?’

She’d struck a chord that echoed across the bridge, and there was a wave of stiffening bodies. Kirk didn’t blink, didn’t breath. Not until the sound of her voice had well and truly dissipated, ‘I’m not going to entertain any other possibilities.’

‘Other possibilities,’ a turn of her mouth full of bright teeth scraped down his spine, ‘In my experience there are only two possibilities — dead or alive. You should try to roll over that soft underbelly. I can find him. I’ll need a Doctor for my team, just in case— be ready immediately, we’ll send over transportation coordinates.’

‘I’ll come with you,' Kirk nodded.

‘That’s very heroic of you, but I don’t need you,’ she said hoarsely, ‘I need a Doctor, a good one.’

‘It’s alright, Jim,’ McCoy touched his shoulder. It grounded Kirk and ratcheted panic in his gut. 

‘ _Doctor_ Trelane Mudd, is it?’

‘I prefer Leonard McCoy.’

‘Liars, all of us,’ she laughed. ‘I will send coordinates for you to beam aboard the VSS Volan, Doctor.’

Kirk looked at him steadily, ‘Bones, I can’t ask you to do this.’

He didn’t answer, just giving him a docked look and setting his jaw. He was impassable.

‘If you would like to keep that shiny starship, leave orbit soon,’ Nessa’s voice pulled him back. 

‘Where to?’

‘The farther and faster, the better, but the closer…well, it would just be easier,’ she said. She tapped the side of her chair, ‘My navigator will send the coordinates, we should try to rendezvous somewhere with minimal instrument function to avoid tracking.’

He stood up in a stroke, shoulders squared, ‘We’ll comply.’

‘What? No threats?’

‘Who would I be fooling?’ his voice was gravelled, ‘you’ve already come too far, Captain.’

‘And you’ve come right along with me,’ she tilted her head, ‘So — for now, Kirk.’

The screen returned to the starbursts of the main view abruptly. There were only two ships left in orbit nearby where there had previously been dozens. There was a feeling of staying too long at the fair and inviting the same dangers entitled to dark alleyways and hollow bushes. In the absence of Nessa’s vacuous stare, Kirk became aware of everyone else’s eyes. 

‘As you were. Uhura, send the coordinates to the transporter room. Chekov, double-check them with the scanners in case they’re pulling a fast one,’ he said, he pressed a link, ‘Bridge, to transporter room, prepare to beam Dr McCoy to the coordinates you are sent.’

‘Transporter room acknowledging. Over.’

‘Bones, come with me.’

The turbo-lift was tenacious with their silence, threatening to hurtle down the shaft if neither spoke soon. Kirk finally looked at McCoy and exhaled. 

‘I didn’t agree for you to go down there,’ he said somberly.

‘There isn't much choice. Besides I’m the best Doctor you’ve got,’ he smiled his boyish smile, revealing block-shape teeth. Kirk suddenly dreaded that this could be the end. An end he’d seen on the Farragut, slippery and inane moments that always swam by and only stung in hindsight.

‘It wasn’t your fault, Bones,’ he said softly.

‘You’re a decent man, Jim. But we both know that’s not exactly true,’ McCoy shook his head wistfully, smile shrinking, ‘I’m sure Spock would do the same for me if our places were switched.’

Then in a matter of minutes, he was gone, and no goodbye could translate Kirk’s gratefulness or the sudden regret. McCoy’s atoms were spread out and reconstituted aboard the VSS Volan. Once they received his confirmation on the other side, Kirk returned to the bridge. He checked over the stations before he took over the science console from Chekov. His hand lingered on the back of the chair where the synthetic leather had cracked with use and noticed buttons that had worn smooth under Spock’s fingers. He traced the rims of the console and took a breath to collect himself.

Kirk studied the star maps that Captain Nessa had sent over. They were expected to rendezvous at the outer rim of the Paulson Nebula, in precise coordinates. There was a high risk of ionisation, and they were banking on it to keep them in hiding from prying eyes and ears of this elusive _they._

‘Chekov, stand-by for coordinates,’ he said without turning around. ‘Plot a course to the Paulson Nebula.’

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘Course heading at warp factor two, Mr Sulu,’ he said, ‘What’s our ETA?’

‘Stardate 53804.28, approximately forty-nine hours.’

Kirk turned scanners back onto Farius Prime. The radiation readings had spiked erratically, and the wavelengths of communication had gone silent. It had become infinitely mute and noisy at once. When he departed the station Lieutenant Hannon took over. Kirk perched on his seat again, attempting to settle his frayed nerves. Spock and McCoy were gone for the foreseeable future, at the very least the next two days. The square darkness unfolded and embraced him. 

‘Leaving orbit now.’

He called off the yellow alert. Inside himself, he could hear the marrow of the Enterprise broiling. The gargantuan miracle drifted along in a vacuum and he and four-hundred and five other souls with it. Even as he tipped over the nadir of a decision that couldn’t be undone, he recognised that no other Captain in the fleet would have made the same choice. He was cleaving his command in two with a desperation he’d known once or twice in his life, a profound misery that had rarely driven him. And still, there was something more significant than dread at the wheel. Something tender and friable that was mangled between Spock’s absence and the impending decommissioning of the mission. Four years of this nomadic existence had been enough to disperse his identity between his Captaincy and Spock. His friend, his confidant… the main difficulty was that somewhere at the peak of denial, Spock had become _more_. 

In an attempt to forego a downfall,he had tamped down on the idea of himself and Spock hard enough to ensure its extinction. So much so, that the impending end of the mission and losing Spock became one and the same. He had accepted it as his time to become undone — to be destroyed and rebuilt in some other light, like some other-self. 

But now he knew what he couldn’t have imagined then; that losing Spock was unbearable. Unconscionable. It made him unwilling him to let go of him at any cost. The Enterprise damned, Starfleet damned. What had held him so fast for four years? So intimately in a chokehold? Pride? Command? 

Kirk straightened up and crossed his legs. He was barely clinging to his conn. 

‘Sir, Starfleet Command is trying to channel through again,’ Uhura said. ‘They’re very insistent.’

She was wincing, the pressures of Starfleet could be brutal at times, chain of command rattling, rankling them in. He nodded slowly. 

‘It’s alright Lieutenant,’ he stood, ‘I’ll take it in briefing room two, ten minutes.’

There was a run of relief in her eyes, ‘Yes, Sir.’

He stood and on his way out, touched the head of her chair, ‘thank you.’

She smiled at him reassuringly. He returned it and went on. Kirk hurried to his quarters and changed into his golds. Before he left, an inner force stopped him. He stood in the withdrawn darkness of his room, listening to the bulkhead, the shrill whistling and knocking of machines. He moved. One step, then two and centred himself between the door and his desk. Here. He was standing here when he and Spock collided. In another reality, they were still colliding.

Kirk pivoted toward the bathroom and let water pool into his palms over the basin. He pressed his face into the cool until his lungs seared for air. When he pulled up, the mirror was speckled with rolling gems. A backlit apparition stared at him, his eyes adjusted in tightening points. They were dark and ringed, cheeks growing fine, light brown stubble and hair in rolling fawn whorls. He saw his father in his jaw, and he saw Sam in himself too, though he couldn’t pinpoint where. Reaching up, brushing two fingers under his chin, he was suddenly overwhelmed by the thought that he hadn’t sat shiva for Sam or his father. Starfleet would have permitted him the leave, but he hadn’t been sure how to ask since he couldn’t have returned to Earth in time. Or maybe he wasn’t ready even though they were well-buried. Maybe he was still caught in the first, irreconcilable shockwave ringing from the loss. The disbelief. A dismal part of him was confident that when he saw Earth again, they would be there.

He could see himself catching a hover cab at the Council Bluff city limits and swiping over the rolling snow, the dry husked corn-fields breaking open on either side. Rabbits were twitching across vast expanses and the direct line to the wooden farm-house, north-west, welcoming him. The air would be ice and electric on his skin, and in his lungs, and he would wake up from this.

When he had been fifteen, he had told a psychiatrist what he had thought of obsessively since returning from Tarsus IV. It came  on a comet-tail of a lightning impulse to share it, simply because he couldn't hold it in himself anymore, _‘I’ve always known I’ll die alone.’_

_ ‘What do you mean by that?’ _

_ ‘When no one is around. When everyone else is gone, I’ll be the last one, and then I’ll die too.’ _

_ ‘You mean figuratively? That loneliness could kill you?’ _

_ ‘Being alone and lonely are different things. I mean actually, really, alone — and I mean, medically dead.’ _

He carded a hand through his hair, leaving wet finger-trails. The peril of his own death cowed him far less than aloneness. Aloneness, more than loneliness. Death was a natural outcome of that far more devastating ordeal.

* * *

The empty briefing room powered up when he entered, forcing him to squint. Kirk stood tall and sat with his spine cemented, placing his hands on the table in front of him and fixing his eyes to the screen. Uhura put the communication through, precisely on time. He answered it from the computer terminal. 

‘Admiral Komack to the USS Enterprise, Omicron sector,’ his brittle, schoolmaster’s face filled the screen. Hair bone-white and brushed flat to his pinkish scalp. ‘Can you read me, Kirk?’

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘Good,’ he said, ‘Now what the hell is going on? You’ve dropped encryption on a classified incident— you’re off the pre-approved flightpath — you better have a cogent explanation for all this.’

‘I was unaware of the article until I returned from Farius Prime, where we picked up repair components,’ he said, ‘by then, there were more pressing matters.’

‘More pressing than a primary code violation?’ 

He had to approach this delicately, ‘there’s been some developments on the planet surface, civil unrest, according to our sources—‘

‘So? That planet — what is it,’ he consolidated his notes, ‘Farius Prime — isn’t Starfleet’s concern. Over the last decade, they have actively refused to join the Federation.’

‘Sir, I understand - but my First Officer was unable to beam back aboard, and we had to leave orbit,’ he said.

‘The First Officer of the USS Enterprise,’ his dark eyes swivelled. Kirk clenched a fist on his thigh. Last time he had butted heads with Komack he had been trying to get Spock to Vulcan in time for his Pon Farr. T’Pau overruling Komack must have seemed like a professional slight, a hit against his pride in the braids. ‘So you’re going against orders for —‘

‘—with all due respect, Admiral, I didn’t have standing orders at the time,’ he said, ‘only scientific priority, which I am fulfilling by approaching the Paulson Nebula for exploration while the Enterprise’s engine undergoes due repairs.’

‘Then you’ve lost the Vulcan?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Well,’ he leaned back in his seat, he was taking a curve to this, leaning into it, ‘I presume you couldn’t get him back, or he’d be roosted next to you now.’

Kirk ground his teeth, fingernails digging out his palm. The implied personal slight was so boldly linked to a tone of xenophobia that it sent the blood crashing in his head, ears alight. 

‘No, Sir,’ he said, the lie of necessity he told next, he almost savoured, ‘I have a rescue party looking for him.’

‘For one man?’ he said, shaking his head. Komack folded his hands in front of him on the desk, coiled, ‘I’m not going to trust you this time, Kirk. In fact, after that debris storm incident I’m inclined to think you’re a hack — this little issue could have been done and dusted right here, but you’ve chosen the hard road.

I’m convening a panel at HQ to review your performance and liabilities. We expect objective reports from everyone on your command team — even Spock. If he makes it back—‘

‘—Commander Spock.’

It took Komack a second to absorb the shock of being interrupted.

‘Sure. For now,’ he enunciated, ‘The panel will convene at stardate 53790.58, via video communication. If you fail to attend, you will be court-marshalled.’

’Is that all, Sir?’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘consider the Enterprise under close scrutiny. Good luck with your Vulcan. Komack out.’

The instant the image went dark, he sprang up. Kirk circled the table and leaned on it, palms flat, contending with his own staggered breathing. He needed to claw out of this skid. Komack’s sneering face was dye-cast on his lids, the contempt that had coloured his voice about Spock was a dog-whistle scritching up the hairs on the back of his neck. Stepping toward the door, he tugged down his shirt, striding, keeping his mind closed. The only way to get through was to push himself into tunnel vision. He existed in five-minute intervals.

He took the lift down into the belly of the ship, a living leviathan now that it had swallowed him whole. The engines came to a roar around him, walls ringing with its force, dozens of young engineers stepping aside at his approach. They were half-buried in circuitry, wearing ear-sets and handing off tools, talking rapidly in the nomenclature of the Enterprise’s intricate binary. Their eyes rarely met his, and when they did, they were blankly occupied and elsewhere. Kirk found Scott at the centre of this strange dance, coordinating everyone in flowing tones, skidding around with bits and pieces and borrowing notes and instruments. A conductor in his prime. The head engineer didn’t notice Kirk for a minute, his gold tunic breaking up the flow of red, a rampant cell in the otherwise well-ordered and rapid turnover of hands.

‘Captain!’ he called when his eyes fell on him. He deferred a young ensign with a gentle hand on his shoulder, stepping over to Kirk, ‘I was just about to message you.’

‘You seem to have everything under control.’

‘Aye, little better than that, Sir,’ he grinned, ‘I got a system worked out to make sure everyone is moving hand-to-hand. We’ll finish three days ahead of schedule at this rate.’

Kirk smiled weakly, ‘come with me for a minute, Scotty.’

They walked off into a narrow corridor that ended in Scott’s office. It was disordered with maps and projections of the Enterprise. Her inner-most details to her essential pieces, lines and lists of intricate rosters he’d drawn up to keep his team working around the clock. Kirk rubbed his neck bashfully. 

‘I appreciate the innovation, but I need a favour,’ he tapped the corner of his desk.

‘Well, I’d say the Captain hardly needs to be asking favours.’

‘Slow it down.’

‘Beg your pardon?’

‘Things have changed. Give her all she’ll take until we get to the Paulson, but then I need you to pull it back, Scotty.’

‘I don’t understand,’ he rubbed his neck.

‘What did you think of Farius Prime?  The planet, the city, people? What was your impression?’

He frowned, ‘I dunno…it was rough. A lot of pirating activity, if I were to bet, and seeing as it’s in lockdown now —that’s probably come from no good.’

‘And you ever heard of an Orion pirate linking up with Starfleet?’

He laughed involuntarily, coughed it down, ‘Not in the wildest of bar tales.’

‘Exactly. When you put those two things together, it doesn’t look good,’ he said, ‘but Starfleet won’t get involved without more proof.’

He looked around his office, hitching arms on his hips. When he looked back, his eyes flashed, ‘The repairs are likely to take two weeks.’

Kirk grinned, ‘that’s a fair amount of time, Scotty.’

‘Can’t be helped, Captain.’

Something imploded, within and without. A low pitched noise modulated from somewhere in the office and shrivelled their hands up to their ears in choreographed crouches. Spurred by instinct, Kirk wildly looked around the office for the source, but the noise seemed effuse from nowhere and everywhere at once, filling up the air.

Scott oriented faster than him, spinning with abrupt twists of his head until he pointed to the desk, where under a pile of blueprints a pin-prinked, yellow jewel of light shone. Kirk pried his hands from his ears and uncovered the source in two sweeps. Papers crumbled, pencils rolling away and a cup of tepid coffee dropping over the side, splattering on his boots in the process.

As soon as he picked it up, he recognised the Romulan gadget for what it was — its shell, split into quarters like the rind of an orange, sharp-edged and obsidian inside. It was missing its centrepiece, which Spock had been investigating on Farius Prime. The yellow light, pearled, screaming out.

He looked around desperately. The nearest safety chute was in the main hall. If the shell was going to explode in the time it took him to move, it was better to stay still.

‘Get out of here, Scotty!’ he shouted, ‘Clear sector 7A and B, and the engineering hall. Now.’

Scott nodded and sprinted out. Kirk stared down, terribly mesmerised by the yellow shine. He pressed the yolk down with a forefinger. It resisted, then went smoothly, and darkened. The sound ended, his knees almost buckled with relief.

Next, it transmitted a fragment of a voice, and the quality reminded him of shortwave radio lines he and Sam would mess with when they were children. It was make-believe so potent he wasn't sure if he had started hallucinating.

The fragment came again, a vowel. His heart stammered. A consonant, white noise, pink noise. Noise. 

‘S-Spock?’ 

There were three or four more fragments, then his voice became stronger and formed entire words, ‘—this? My position is 5-2 point 1-9-2 dash 4-3 point 9-8-2, Farius Prime. Come in.’

Kirk realised he’d lost his own voice to awe. Throat punching with the beat of his heart,hurting him, stretching him.

‘Spock,’ he finally managed, ‘Are you alright?’

‘Jim?’

‘It's me, I’m here,’ he said, ‘Are you safe?’

‘I'm presently out of harm's way,’ his voice dropped in and out on stressors. He seemed to be short of breath, baritone hucking from in-deep. ‘The ship? Out of danger?’

‘Yes, we’ve left orbit,’ it was a shameful admittance. Kirk bit his tongue hard, drawing blood, he didn’t blink. 'How did you get through?'

‘This device appears unaffected by the ionic fields deterring other communication. The situation here has escalated.  Two factions are fighting for control of the trading hangars,’ he said lowly, ‘both are relatively organised, but not uniform. As a result, the city has begun rioting.’

‘Where are you?’

There was an extended pause, ‘In hiding, I located a subterranean network that is relatively untouched by the conflict.’

‘People are looking for you,’ Kirk said, ‘and McCoy is with them.’

‘Call them back to the ship,’ suddenly he was harsh, nearly commanding, 'I can extricate myself soon.'

‘They’ll contact your comm once they’re in range,’ Kirk said firmly, then blinked and opened to him again, ‘Spock, they’ll be there soon. Just hold on.’

There was deep punctuation.

‘ _Ashayam_ …’ Spock's voice faded, garbled as a brook, ‘the circumstances are not assured.’

‘No. They are. They will be,’ he said tightly, ‘The ship is the VSS Volan, it’s going to rendezvous with the Enterprise in forty-five hours — and I’ll see you then. I’ll see you, Spock.’

A whistling picked up, and Kirk almost dropped the device. It ebbed after an excruciating minute.

'...the power source is draining.’

‘Spock,’ Kirk slumped into the seat behind him, he leaned low over, ‘Please, please...’

There was a series of flutters and interruptions, a low, thundering hum. 

‘I suppose—‘ his voice crackled in waves, ‘—if I were to defeat your current streak in our chess matches, I would have no choice but to return.’

Kirk chuckled, he pressed forefinger and thumb into his eyes as hard as he could. Hard enough to see shapes, to feel pain. He withdrew his fingers damp, eyes burned out from the pressure. 

‘I’ll lose,’ he said softly, ‘I promise.’

There was more dust, and it took Kirk back to the dead-ends of records his father kept in neat jackets, gatefolds, neat rows. Folk albums, a lot of them. He held his breath for an answer. Nothing. After a minute there was no dust either. Scott's shadow came long and jagged through the doorway. His face was uncharacteristically desolate, hands fisted loosely at his sides.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaaand that's the end of part one! Thanks for sticking around! This chapter's title came from Basho's Haiku _First Snow_ ,
> 
> First snow  
> falling  
> on the half-finished bridge.
> 
> In this house, we love and cherish poetry and are also bad at chapter titles, so. Next chapter should be coming in a week's time, and it absolutely kicked my ass when I wrote the first draft, hopefully, I survive the second. 
> 
> Also, I don't have a beta. The thin line of defence between my brain and total chaos has so far been Grammarly and our old pal spell-check, please forgive any errors.


	11. Broken Wing Act

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Kind of) unofficially, this is the beginning of part two!  
> Just a heads up for violence.

_I believe that for his escape, he took advantage of the migration of a flock of wild birds._

**_—The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry_ **

* * *

He hadn’t dreamed in years.  Not since three nights after his Pon Farr, hoveled between curlicues of fresh-laundered blankets and falling so hard and so fast that creases his body made became ironed in.  Coming out of the _plak tow_ had chilled him and set off like a victim of drug withdrawal, he’d been rheumy and meek for several days. His body had become a series of bones strung with sinew, stomach turned on whims and fourth fingers on both hands intermittently numb. Tinnitus followed him at the best of times, and an oscillating binaural howl at the worst. He was struck on the bridge and in the corners of labs, in conversation with the crew and long stretches of administrative work hands curling around his stylus to keep grounded. 

Spock’s solution was to take cover under his mental shields and extricate his intellectual capacities from his physical and emotional ones. When he did, he would become a wooden puppeteer of his voice. His mouth moved and his voice box vibrated with all the correct sounds. He remained numb to the implications, becoming an emotionless and hollow vessel that harboured echoes peeling back to his earliest memories like the caves of Shi’Kar carried myths of the fore-parents. Vulcan would have preferred this be his natural state. But he was a stranger to himself during that time.

That night, the night he had last dreamt, they had just departed their diplomatic romp on Altair VI. The corridors were awash with aqua lights of beta, shimmering mirages that made wormholes of bulkheads and beaded the air with the charges of the galaxy they were cruising — warp four. In Spock’s experience, it was here that time disappeared. The ship transmogrified into an entity with its own will. Fascinating and beautiful.

Spock had rung at Kirk’s door, and he had opened it in his gilded uniform. His collar was unclasped to the dip of his clavicles and his hair had spilt onto his forehead. When he moved his medals jangled in his pocket, he smiled at Spock and greeted him, but his eyes were tired; Admiral Komack had been snide during the proceedings. He had hooked the Captain on a mocking paw by the trap of his neck, and driven him into the gardens for a private talk. Afterwards, at the multi-utensil dinner, he cut Kirk’s sentences short with belting, over-familiar disagreements, and denotations like _buddy_ , _pal, sport_ and _kiddo._ The words had harpooned Kirk. Spock sat beside him and helplessly watched his ears become lashed red as a boy’s, cheeks lightened, mouth tight. Komack hadn’t even spared Spock the courtesy of looking at him, let alone belittling him. In that tide of decorum, his Captain was effaced and beat. The sight had struck him as hard as any fist. Nausea and the numb fingers had been close companions of the dinner, arresting any possibility of going to his aid. He had eaten out of politeness and lost it as soon as he returned to his quarters, bowed over the sink, ashamed even in his solitude before brushing his teeth ferociously and stepping out. 

And then there Jim stood: in the open door wearing black socks, hand on the jamb with a warm little smile. And a soft, surprised voice, ‘Spock? I was just about to pay you a visit.

‘I am not inconveniencing you?’

‘No, of course not,’ he stepped backwards, waving him through. ‘You want a drink? I…may have started a little early.’

There was a bottle of spiced rum a quarter gone on the desk and the scent had introduced a sultry, lamentable air to the cabin. It cradled the music leaking from the computer terminal. Spock recognised the barebones; the picked guitar, hitching up and down in long twangs under a lulling voice. It set him smooth - _we can down easy. Come up and see me with your big brown eyes_ \- and rucked him up.

‘Oh shoot,’ Jim snapped his fingers as he picked up his half-glass from the edge, he turned to him, ‘the chess board’s in your room. And this rum has sucrose in it… I’m sorry, I’m being a poor host.’

‘I am disinclined toward alcohol in any case,’ he said.

Jim smiled at him again, turned down the music some and rubbed his eyes, ‘What a night,’ he said under his palm.

‘Jim,’ it immediately brought his eyes up to Spock’s. It dried his smile, ‘I’ve come to apologise to you.’

There was a deep valley of nothing but the crowing voice, _you curl around me, like a fern in the spring._

‘You don’t have anything to apologise for,’ he tipped back the rest of the rum.

‘I do,’ Spock glanced down, ‘Admiral Komack’s unpleasantness toward you tonight was because of our interruption at Vulcan.’

Jim winced, he popped open the bottle and poured another finger, three-fourths of an inch that he overshot. The amber drops glazed the side, ‘sit with me, Spock,’ he said quietly, ‘If I stay on my feet for another minute I’m going to look very un-captainly.’

‘You are off duty.’

‘Still,’ Jim squinted at him warmly, he lowered himself to ground and leaned against the bottom of the divider. He sighed with his knees halfway up to his chest. Spock realised Jim was drunker than he had let on. It would be better to resume the conversation another time, but Jim waved him down so gently, his fingers were orchestrating the ends of the song, he was alone and open. He was wet ash in the embers of the night. Spock sat down, he crossed his legs opposite from him like a child and lay his half-numb hands on his knees.

Jim sipped again, and his lips were wet and pink. The song changed. _Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river. You can hear the boats go by—_ so the narrative went. 

’Admiral Komack’s behaviour was because of nothing but his ignorance,’ Jim said, looking at him, ‘unfortunately it can’t be helped. At least not by us.’

‘Yes,’ Spock nodded, ‘I suppose that is ultimately the issue, however preceding the preapproved course was risky, and T’Pau’s interference was not a given.’

‘That’s true.’

‘You would have lost the Enterprise.’

‘I made the decision anyway,’ he said. He cleared his throat and stared into a dead middle distance on the floor, ‘I didn’t know T’Pau was even involved, let alone that she would help us out.’

What was there to say to that? Spock was at a loss, he bowed his head and stared at the ocean between them - _and you want to travel blind. And you think maybe you’ll trust him_ \- the music filled him up until the splitting sound was back in his head, and he was very cold. He was breaking under the smell of rum and Jim’s room and his perfume which was woodsy and woven with the odd flower or two. He couldn’t feel his hands. He slumped to relieve the pressure on his back. It was practised work to trap himself up in his shields and ignore the transient pains. He finally looked up.

‘Spock?’ Jim’s expression had tangled up, ‘What’s wrong?’

He blinked dumbly, ‘You risked your career. The ship.’

‘You didn’t answer me.’

Spock had turned feeble, all he could do was remain still, ‘I have been experiencing some mild, feverish symptoms after…departing Vulcan. It is quite routine.’

‘Can I help in any way?’

Spock shook his head and stood up, riding an errant wave of nausea. He took two steps across and sat beside Jim. Shoulder to shoulder with him, he shut his eyes and tried to focus on the solid angles holding his liquified body. Spock opened his eyes and looked at Jim, and he began to apologise again when he quietened him with a brief hand on his arm. He shushed him, and the sound rocked Spock to some shore of comfort. Things muddled for a few minutes as his nausea subsided, the whistling in his ear ebbed, and he withdrew from his twilight. 

When he was back the song had reeled toward its final verse a rolling and plaintive voice going downwind- _and the sun pours down like honey on our lady of the harbour—_ there was a shivering misery at its depth.

‘Are you better?’

‘Yes.’

‘We’re both…some terrible kind of drunk,’ Jim whispered, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

‘Tonight’s events upset you.’

‘No,’ he smiled, and Spock caught it in his periphery. They had reached a mute conclusion to stare ahead at the underside of the desk, to ignore the contact of their shoulders. ‘My pride was a little injured, that’s it. “It’s got me beat, but it’s not so bad for the soul” — that’s something my mother says.’

‘It is a wise sentiment.’

‘Not so wise to get drunk about.’

‘Perhaps not.’

Jim chuckled, he slid away. The absence of his touch, even through two layers of dress uniform, filtered as a sort of pathetic nakedness. Spock repressed a shiver.

‘Do you disapprove of me?’ and something in Jim’s voice tended toward caution, maybe worry. 

‘It is not my place to disapprove.’

‘It is,’ Jim said, ‘There isn’t anyone else - no one else I’d care to ask.’ 

And on some reflection, Spock realised that held some truth, over the past four years, by processes of elimination and the tracts of light-years of travel they had become one another's keeper.

‘So?’

‘I…neither approve nor disapprove.’

‘I’ll take it,’ his laugh rang out like bells. He was so bright shined off with his sweet liquor. Spock had a faint, dizzying impression of his breath hitting his cheek and became vulnerable to him. He was liable to become intoxicated from his proximity.

They sat in the pooling heat of the song's end. Something else started up. The first strums were the weft of a tapestry, threaded mournfully by a woman’s voice, _first time, ever I saw your face —_ Jim’s eyes fluttered shut, and his breathing flattened out. ‘I like this one.’

_I thought the sun rose in your eyes_ — he hummed the last three words, airing the sounds partially off-key.

‘I like this song…and-and I hate what they make of us sometimes, Spock,’ he murmured, ‘—soldiers. We’re not soldiers. _You_ aren’t, at least.’

‘You are not either,’ Spock murmured.

‘Maybe not,’ Jim said with his eyes still shut, ‘but that’s what they need, the thing they want. A good soldier. Good soldiers…’ another breath tumbled from his mouth, 'That’s not what I am.’

‘No,’ he turned to him, his profile was submerged in music, ‘You are my Captain. This crew's moral centre - and an explorer.’

‘Yes?’ Jim turned to him, eyes lazily opening. They were a hazel ore that couldn't be dug out of the most profound mountain, embedded with starbursts. 

‘Yes,’ Spock so very nearly didn’t get the word out. He cleared his throat softly and went on, ‘And what do you propose I am, if not Starfleet's soldier?’

He smiled at him, concentrated in his eyes. He drunkenly let his head rest against the wall, and it was as if they were lying beside each other on another axis, their gravity shifting. Spock noticed tears tilting in the corners of his eyes.

‘You,’ Jim began, ’are an astronaut. And you’re a brilliant scientist, unique in all this universe, Spock. In every way… and sometimes, when I go back to my quarters, I can hear you playing the lyre. It comes through the bulkhead just- a little louder than the engine, and all that’s left is you and the music and me.

I think,' he exhaled, and the air sailed over Spock’s lips, ‘Hardly - rarely could anyone do enough to deserve your friendship.’

Then he was exceptionally tender as an open, bleeding wound. There remained only a single, fulfilling conclusion, and it was up to Spock to complete it. Jim waited for him on the other side of the words he had spoken. Spock recognised that there was a brutal and violent affection lodged in his heart for him and that it burned all day and night long as only his body had burned in _plak tow_. If he kissed him, he realised, in a precise and unique way, he would be sick for him all his life long. If he kissed him, he would want him no less in fifty years than he did tonight. A lifetime wouldn’t suffice, and knowing they had even less than that had the potential to destroy them both. Or at least Spock would break, and he would have tethered them both for the drowning. 

More simply yet, what if this were just the drunk whim of a beautiful man. Spock didn't trust himself to calculate the distinction, and there could be no room for error between them. He blinked several times and turned away. 

Jim’s next exhale was a shot-blast to his temple. Maybe it was a relief. He looked away and polished off his glass.

Spock made all the loose, inane excuses; the hour was late; they were exploring a quasar in the coming shift. He had to leave. He stood up and Jim followed after a moment, unsteadily, to see him out the door. When the electric mouth parted, Jim smiled at him sadly, he carded back the fair tresses into their cowlick, held out his chest in an attempt at pride.

‘Have a good night, Spock,’ he said.

‘And you.’

When Spock dropped into bed minutes later, ten feet from where they had been, he curled in on himself like a dog.

Then he dreamed. He saw the ancestral land; the strokes of sand under red light; sheer drops to the east and the valley of denser soil where I-chaya had been buried some twenty or so years ago; north, where the major roads led into transport stations and thereon to the cities sleeping under a scourge of atmosphere and ochre dust. He was sitting in his father’s home, but he had an impression of these tracts of meaning the way idle limbs are no less a part of the body. 

Around him, the study was in the perfect, early light, and the north star lingered in the plate glass, a straggling chimaera on her last whim. She was the first to arrive and the last to leave the sky in summers, _katelau sa’awek,_ the widow, and Spock was inearthed under her in a deep, black lounge. The low desks around him were stacked with volumes of pastel paper, and lamps bled colour redolent of honey. In a morning view, they were over-fed and lush. He wanted to be alone with the widow, but his body was too heavy for movement, weighed down and sucked into the pleasure of the softness. He watched her phasing into the citrus peels of the morning, burning in the total absence of clouds until she was less than a memory. Footsteps came out of her absence. They were organised steps and he had the impression of them on his flesh, walking the plank between his ribs.

‘Spock,’ he heard the city of Kir in her accent. He didn’t turn. The weight of a book had become present in his lap, like an anvil, cotton covers he pressed a palm to. The sky was impressed as a single, pink-red wall of paint in his eyes. They both spoke in informal Vulcan.

‘What is it?’

‘You did not come to bed last night.’

‘That is true.’

‘I expected you.’

T’Pring stood by the table with her arms crossed, tucked into a beige robe. Her skin was a sheet of paper in the cold, thin air, and her eyes were origamied with sleep and her hair fell in loose curls over her shoulders. A few strands were stuck to her cheek in streams of pillow creases. It disconcerted him to no end. He clutched the book harder to hide his hands. 

‘I do not understand,’ he looked into her beetled eyes. They didn’t betray emotion, but he knew she was furious. It went through him like a current of flavour. Within the detached cover of a dream, he recognised they were entirely bonded.

‘I expected to have sex with you,’ she said, so nearly mechanically. ‘If we are to at least reproduce, you must perform your duties.’

Spock looked at her numbly. She drew her lithe hands to her collar and pared away the folds to the edge of her shoulders, revealing a stripe of flesh over valleys of limbs central to her body, breasts, stomach and thighs, knees somehow inarticulate and vulnerable above her pale shins. Her breastbone absorbed all the light in the world and it was her thread into him as a steel rod would be. There were ripples of impatience through her mind. All Spock could think was that the cost of this domesticity had been Jim’s life. He had a sudden inclination of the way the Captain’s body had arched into his on the coal-hot sands and felt arousal deep in the tangle of his gut.

‘I am not attracted to you,’ Spock said plainly.

She closed her robe over, nails drawing taut lines in the fabric, ‘You are not unattracted to me — you are defective.’

He turned to the window, and he didn’t hear her leave, but he knew she had gone. _Defective_ , it mired him. When he looked down, he found _Leaves of Grass_ between his hands and night had come all at once. The lamps signalled like lighthouse keepers to one another. The distant lights of the city were a monotonous star cluster. He stood with the intention of taking the book with him, but he seemed to have misplaced it. There was the sensation of slipstreaming through time, of long, quiet mornings at the table eating, eating, eating. Followed by a commute in a hover cab which would not end and smattering seconds of sex in which he would move mechanically and never find relief. He had eaten until he was overfilled and travelled to the ends of the universe, and copulated enough to produce a million unloved children that were never born. And it would not end. T'Pring had gouged dents in his mind from where she barrelled into him. _Defective, defective!_ He could bleed internally, but he would never die from it. 

He was in the hover cab and the land was passing, the mountain’s teeth were bleeding Human plasma on the horizon, gnawing at the sand’s flesh. A hand fell on his knee. A different presence was there. 

‘Sern?’

‘Yes?’

He felt as though there might finally be a destination. And here the narrow bridge over the troubled waters of consciousness had dipped, had nearly broken with shock. Spock knew that he hadn’t seen Sern since leaving Vulcan to study at Starfleet Academy, but he was there nonetheless. He was older and his face had lined handsomely, his hair coruscated aburn hot-wires in passing beams of the sun. His hands were immaculate. Gently, he took Spock’s. Fire-crackers at a festival, missiles and phasers in war — they shot through him. His lyre was on the floor of the car, and the strings were torn.

‘My father said he could fix it,’ Sern nodded toward it, ‘But it may never sound the same.’

‘I could procure another.’

‘You could not craft a precise replica.’

‘Maybe.' There could never be music again. Not the same kind. ‘However, if it will not sound the same, then I will not need to play.’

‘And you will not need a tutor.’

‘I have not needed a tutor for some time,’ Spock answered, pressing his hand, lacing their fingers. Sern exploded into a pal of dust, and momentum of the car threw Spock clean into the roadside like a rock. His body hurt, his hands were scuffed and rawly viridescent. He stared at the bones skimming close to flesh with sick fascination. It ended then, and he tore back into his body and consciousness at once.

A sour breedle came from the chronometer; the disappointment of losing the lyre filled his lungs. Spock rose steadily, to save the dream the satisfaction of breaking him, and went to the corner of his room where he kept his lyre. Reality grew in him as he undid the clasp, there was a smell of resin he had applied to the strings, and the wood was assured and worn in the most intimate curves. He sat on the floor, cradling it like a child, and began playing himself into the first notes of a short meditation.

* * *

That was the last time he had dreamed, and he dreamed so rarely. Now, he was presently buried in the labyrinth of himself searching for evidence: had he tipped into the fabric of unreality, or had he indeed contacted the Captain? After all, there was no physical proof. His phaser and the Romulan device had been long lost, tumbling somewhere into the fabric of Farius Prime, dashed from the folds of his clothes in one of his runs motivated by clapping steps and jets of fire. Or had he been stopped? There was a vague notion of hands gliding past his barriers and pecking his body to divest him of his possessions. Regardless, he had to turn inward for clues. 

Spock attempted to categorise the differences between his dreams and memories, to accrue scientific data on their modulation of subjectivity. But his threads of reasoning were extracted as the cold pierced him to the marrow. He was still faintly aware of the hazy blue glow coming through the storm drain grate, and the fulgent match strikes of violence that had continued well into the night, barring any possibility of leaving the ice-trap. His robes had sodded against his skin hours ago, and his feet had been anaesthetised in gummy water. There was the hollow sound of dripping overhead and the gurgling breath beneath, both spinning spirals into his mind that could not be undone, driving him further inward. The carefully tended hedge mazes, rows of orchids and clipped lawns that were his ordered thoughts had become a rainforest nettled with insects. He numbly trestled an arm across his knees and waited. Sun punctured the canopy. What was he waiting for?

Yes. Thoughts began to drip-feed through a loop of short-circuiting nerves. Theoretically, he had contacted the Captain using the Romulan device. Then again the science and machinery were muddled. If he had managed that feat, he would be able to recall every step of his process. And if it stood to reason that his unconscious mind could conjure T’Pring and Sern, he could apparate the Captain too. His voice and his tones to a disconcerting degree of accuracy. More so because he was important to him —  _at his side, always been there, always will_ —  if he had any pride to hurt, that would have been as good a time as any for injury. He had looked at her in veiled amazement; the oracular Edith Keeler, predictive to the fullest of the past and future with the lightest of touches. He understood why Jim had fallen in love with her, but the consideration hadn’t stopped a hurtling, ratcheting sweetness in his gut when his Captain withered in his arms while she lay dead on a half-sealed road. Spock watched the automobile’s engine curling steam around her corpse through a curtain of legs gathering to spectate, the Doctor included, having slipped Jim’s vice to join them. Their future had cost her her life. The weight of Jim in his arms had inexplicably cost her and in a terrifying glimmer of his own teeth - of what was primordial and pre-Surakian in himself - he took sick satisfaction in it. It was as if she were the last piece of the mechanic puzzle he’d assembled to tap into the future newspapers with _bearskins_ _and knives._ What had taken him hours and skin off his fingers and pounds from his flesh to assemble, that backbreaking labour of science- had come to her so readily she could look into a dozen starving faces and tell them the most beautiful future was quickening already. Spock had defrauded her. Then he had looked into Jim’s eyes and told him she must die. 

No, he could never really be forgiven for Edith Keeler. Least of all by himself. 

It stood to reason that he must have dreamed the call. _Spock_ — and no one else said his name that way, _Spo-h-k_ , _please, please._ What did he have to give that he hadn’t taken three-fold? There was nothing Jim could ask him for that he’d deny him. He would be his sacrificial lamb, his complicit criminal, a liar and killer and cheat. But it meant less than the sum of its grandiose proclamation when he knew Jim would never ask these things of him. He would never make him less he wished to be; that made Spock safe to promise him everything. But being asked for nothing and promising everything was a poor ticket of unconditional affection. 

There was music in the fat drops landing around him, far from the deserts of his home - _and you want to travel blind. And you think maybe you’ll trust him_ \- the water slid onto the narrow viaduct of his spine and slithered down. The cold was burning. Spock’s eyes punched open. It was no nearer to dawn. This night would last forever. But the lack of the sun did not preclude a need to survive; if it was raining, it could only be a matter of minutes before he drowned with his back pressed into the mossy tunnel-cheek. 

A bird call interrupted Spock’s attempt to construe a plan. He listened for it carefully, he looked left and right into the gorges of the drain. Even if he wanted to go now, he wouldn’t be able to find the way. The bird called again, a soft chirp peddling his heart. Spock peeled back the outer shell of his robe. A layer of verglas had formed an exoskeleton around him and it crackled over the cloth. He withdrew the bird and she was aglow. Her trembling, thin body woke his hands with warmth, feathers disordered as he cupped her in front of him. Dream or memory, a memory flooded him.

‘ _Mother!’_ he had jumped, tugging her along for a better look, ‘that bird is injured.’

Overcast day, the redwoods harboured them against errant drops. She had brought him here in her break from the conference, made him complicit to her escape from the diplomatic monotony. He didn’t mind. He revelled to see the strangely verdant and lush land his mother had made a fairytale to him. Vulcan had millions-fewer flying species. 

She anchored him several feet from the creature. Its wings were acrobatically turned and dragging on the brush as the spindly legs hop-skimmed. 

‘No, Spock,’ she knelt behind him, head over his shoulder. His yellow parka was dotted with rain and wet her chin. She didn’t mind. Her voice was far-off under his proofed hood, she had put out three layers for him that morning; _You will be cold, darling - But you will not be? - No, I’ll be alright in my blue coat -_ they watched the bird engaging in her scuffling dance. A twig caught in her feathers. 

‘She’s a killdeer,’ his mother said, ‘she does this to distract predators from her nest.’

‘But…Huma—we are not typical predators of birds.’

‘Well, that would be news to her,’ she said. He could hear the smile in her voice, a ripple of it crossed the parental bond. ‘She’s beautiful, isn’t she?’

He didn’t understand what compelled a deceitful animal to beauty. He asked, ’So, she's uninjured?’

‘Yes,’ she stood up with a hand on his shoulder. He looked up at her and she touched the crown of his head, drops that had puddled in the dips of his slicker spilt. The bird continued to fluster, dropping her tail and raising wings, screaming. His mother took his hand again, slippery and cool with rain, and led him away until the plover was at ease. 

Now, the same bird was prone in his palms. Her red-rimmed eye glinted in the shifting darkness, and the light she gave off blew through the water. For the last drops of consciousness dribbling out of him, she was as real as Jim’s voice had been. What was certain was her call, echoing off his palms and amplifying. It went on for another minute. Then very suddenly, she died. Her light dropped off, and with it, he shut his eyes again. He fell into an uneasy stupor for some time, in warp-darkness, shrouded by the speed of light. And so it went, and so _we can go down easy_ and so it was not a significant event, one life out of billions gone and billions to come, _like a fern in the spring -_ he was warm, he was held.

A final sound came from the dead animal. When he opened his eyes, he was holding his communicator. A red light blinked with the incoming message. Spock slid a nail under the top and flipped it open. He dialled the knob with his other hand. 

‘Goddamit, Spock! Spock!’ the gravelly voice made him flinch. ‘You there? That you? Spock!’

‘Charming as always, Doctor,’ he said, shutting his eyes again, swimming in words.

‘It’s him!’ he called to the other end, ‘he’s down there, it’s him — we’re coming, Spock. We’re nearly there.’

The narrow light through the grate shuttered with movement, and Spock looked up distantly as if from the surface of a planet to the cosmos before the invention of spaceflight. Water ran into his eyes, and he tasted sulfur. It wasn’t long when the dark waters moved, and the ripples reached him before the voices. He watched them lapping at the edges of his boots dispassionately, sinking.

‘Spock!’ he heard a familiar voice out of a bundle of stranger’s clothes. The Doctor was draped in black, fingerless gloves reached out to him, and he took his head between them. The wool scratched Spock’s skin, awakened him to the difference between cold and hot. He began to shiver uncontrollably. Two separate shadows were encroaching, and Spock looked away from McCoy, eyes side-lining and white as a wild animal.

‘It’s alright, they’re with me,’ he told him, reaching into his medic pack and pulling out a flashlight. The enamel of his teeth flashed as he tucked it between his lips. He indicated the beam with two fingers and Spock obediently stared into the god-light. 

‘Bet you’re all kinds of out of it,’ McCoy muttered, he used the light to find a hypo in his pack, ‘Spock, I’m gonna ask you some questions, do you understand?’

‘Yes.’

‘What’s your rank?’

‘Commander.’

‘Ship?’

‘USS Enterprise NCC 1701.’

‘Commanding officer?’

Nothing would come. McCoy toggled the light over. He asked again. 

‘Captain James T. Kirk.’

‘Good. What’s the current stardate?’

‘Thirty-five, twenty-’ his teeth clattered violently. McCoy hushed him, he twisted the vial into the hypo. 

‘Count,’ he said. ‘Backward from twenty.’

Spock started as well as he could. McCoy’s grip directed his head to the side and oystered the white, fragile flesh of his neck. A brumal current whipped his nerves. Somewhere around sixteen, there was a compression of a hypo, the pneumatic snake latching on for an instant. Spock was set alight from the inside out. He tamped down an urge to scream, rocking back on his narrow perch and smacking into the curved tunnel wall instead air pumping in gasps and eyes sliding up mangling vision. McCoy pinned his shoulders to the wall. _Keep counting, keep counting,_ he said. There was a resurgence of feeling in his limbs and digits. Feet, hands, and the skin of his face. Ten, nine, eight. The scorch gradually began to normalise, and the spasming reactions subsided. 

‘That’s alright, just breath,’ McCoy nodded, holding his shoulders, ‘you’re just coming out of the hypothermia, but I can’t do a complete exam in this damn pit. Take it easy.’

’So?’ the shadows had become people. People inspecting Spock like he’d seen ensigns peering at lab specimens. 

‘He’s alive,’ McCoy said without turning to face them, putting away his supplies. ‘I need to get him out of here now.’

An Orion man and woman carrying large phasers approached.

‘The entrance was caved in,’ the woman said. 

‘What?’

'They can't come in after us.’

‘Yeah, and we got a way out?’

Spock sat forward, he pressed his hands together, the communicator was embedded in his clutch, ‘the grate,’ he intoned. McCoy helped him to his feet; his joints were frosted knots.

The Orion woman glanced up to hole. Pearlescent teeth alighted in her face., ‘Well you’re _the_ Mr Spock alright — maybe even worth the trouble, huh?’

A light flared to the left of them. It died like a match. Voices were clambering closer, tongues lashing and the deluge was stamped into waves breaking at their feet.

‘Step back,’ the Orion man indicated the other wall, he and the woman blasted trough the metal barriers. Their phasers screamed out in green shots, fission chambers overheating momentarily and overexposing the tunnel. Spock gleaned his first look at McCoy, vaulted and reddened eyes met his. The concrete segment blew off in crumbling sections. Rubble avalanched on their side, rolling water up as blue light flooded between plumes.

The Orion man pulled himself up before the field had cleared and his hand came back through the destroyed mists for McCoy, boosted up easily. When the Doctor pulled Spock through by the forearms, his robes were heavy with the wet, tearing on the edge oftwists of disrupted metal. He came away in tatters, crawling out into the clear, lungs punching with fresh air. The world spun around him with dizzying force. The sparkling eyes of the buildings rose and shadows skittered underneath and they could hear pops of conflict in the distance echoing through the heights before folding around the endless polished corners. There was the faint smell of smoke, and everywhere was shrouded in a sick greyness, slurry ran in corners with dirt. Spock took a step and found the ground glittered with glass, crunching moreish as thin bones. 

‘This way,’ the woman had come through, hoarding them leftward off the bat. Running oiled his joints, and Spock felt a nominal flow of consciousness returning to him. There were blurred monuments to the struggles and phasers ripped off in several directions as assailants approached and were repelled. The markets and bustling events of Rotundas’ day had been reduced to slattering debris shod to corners and organic and inorganic forms mated into mutant creatures out of the dark fabrics that stretched between skullcap-white concrete. McCoy clasped his elbow tightly to redirect him from an oncoming hovercar and they pivoted on the Orions’ coattails, shooting toward an alleyway so narrow they filed into a single line. Before squeezing in, Spock had the impression of two people fighting across the way, Romulans, claw to claw.One of them grabbed the other’s lapels, blindly seizing a neck and shooting point-blank. The head eviscerated into ribbons of braid matter and spinal fluid fountained out like hydro-coils There was the sound of spring rain splattering the pavement.

‘Come on, Spock,’ McCoy hissed, and Spock turned to see his blue, almost transparent eyes were glazed and fixed.

Entering the alleyway sucked up their air. There was a smell of sulfur and excrement hitting up so hard Spock had to hold his breath. McCoy drily hucked behind him. Spock turned and found him bent a quarter, hands scraping the walls, making a pavilion of his shaking chest. Spock returned and took a fistful of his scruff, pulling him up and along. Going on, the alley became narrower toward the apex and swallowed them into its gut with all the other matter that had washed in. Suds drizzled from ledges and plastered hair to their scalps while a redness exploded ahead of their charge. The Orion man slagged to the central gutterand the same narrow light began recharging for the woman. She drew faster, and the other body dropped first. She stepped over the duel lost and the duel lost, picking her feet up and screamed back at Spock and McCoywordlessly. Her dark eyes had raisined to be all pupil.

The bodies were difficult to navigate, and viscous blood had imploded in Rorschach blotches and Spock’s boots slicked, he palmed the hewn walls to remain balanced. They emerged into a square dead-end, white with floodlights and two doors stood in the opposing wall.

‘What the hell is this place?’ McCoy rasped as he pushed through the last foot, emerging like a newborn foal, slippery with blood and water. 

The woman squared up to them. Her eyes did not waver to her dead, fallen friend.

‘This is an asset holdings facility,’ she said. She spat by the side of her boot, ‘the best way to the shuttle is through since this was the first place to fall, we will not be stopped.’

McCoy glanced back at the bodies in the exit of the canal and weakened by his long sojourn, Spock received a wave of dread from his thoughts. _It could have been any one of us._

‘Let’s get the hell out of here then,’ McCoy said, beginning to walk. She grabbed his elbow. 

‘No,’ she hissed, ‘once we enter…you may see things, things that will make you want to stop. But we cannot. No matter what happens, we must not stop. Not even a minute.’

‘I do not understand,’ Spock said. As his breath regulated, he managed to shutter out more of McCoy’s thoughts, but the woman’s eyes flashed, and her panic and disdain went over him like the wind. He held the shiver at the base of his ribs. 

‘You do not need to understand right now,’ she said, ‘Only that you may not stop.’

McCoy glanced at Spock, Spock nodded, ‘Very well.’

She moved to the door on the left. Whatever security mechanism had been in place had been eroded with explosives by the previous visitors. She pushed in quickly. The interior was a blank out of whiteness for a long time. Pigments ran into the nothing once his eyes had adjusted. There were emeralds and purples, red, candied and glazed on the floor and up to the walls. The sources strewed around them, an amassment of bodies that were disarticulated, while empty, last-clasp hands sprouted upward with their final thoughts as weak and soft as babies. There was a multitude of unseeing eyes up to the heaven-high ceilings, so brilliant in colours and variations as a collection of marbles maybe and a signature of their home planets. Tucked into the corners of the room were cubes five, six meters across, crafted from opaque lime-white material and fitted with no bars or windows - only a single door, and computer units were flashing desolately red like abandoned mining stations. There was an assortment of other cargo, masses of electrical and mechanical pieces of every size, entwined with the dead that had fallen over them. Their path was straight through the carnage, only a hundred meters to the open door. As they stepped on, the smell of bodies was pungent and putrid, rotting fruit and melted plastic as the leaking dyes ran into each other like paint at thresholds of the fallen. Red and green blood made brown, and so forth. Elementary and vulgar. Spock clenched his jaw. There was the note of agony around them as the final note in a symphony haunted aperformance hall. 

As he walked, Spock stared for a long time at the boxes, taking refuge in the comfort of their unknowns against what was so intimately internal to the spilt bodies. Though if he were to interpret the red lights, then their contents were likely worse than what was with-out. Halfway through, the dangers of stopping seemed quelled; they resigned and gained a momentum that they had to reach back and gather from the earliest time they recalled moving their bodies. On approach, the city’s rumbling became aberrant again, the wind blew through the gaping door, the shuttlecraft sat under low lights, ready for departure. The vessel was just big enough to contain them, and the rough engine was the main affair, and the interior seemed like an afterthought. 

Spock thought about contacting the Captain — memory, not dream. It had occurred, and Jim had been right, he had made it so — _assured_. Spock recognised that for long stretches, sitting and mulching in the tunnel, he thought he would never see the Enterprise again. Though now, it grew in him with every step. He envisioned the bridge, his waiting station, the simmering lights of the beta corridors, the fresh-set chessboard, and Jim’s eyes across from him. Jim would smile at him, and he would offer a drink, which Spock would routinely decline, and then it would finally be time to let go.

As this notion slot into his head, a low-pitched howl swept him. Ear-splitting commotion entered and wracked him. He felt all his controls become incapacitated at once and the carefully structured barriers and mental shields were ripped through by tonnes, a wave rising overhead and tumbling him. Called by something beyond himself, he turned to one of the unmarked boxes, heart imploding in his side as he fought himself with the last ounce of his strength. He lost, he moved off the designated path. McCoy turned and ran for him first, but Spock’s body was flying over the others, out of grasp. He tripped among the remains several times and became washed in the blood to his chin. He was thrown bodily into a bullseye and he scrambled to open the door, driven by an impetus beyond himself, singing in his veins and bones. A scream started up on the other side of the door, and Spock lost his sight as it gave under his hands. Before it all went, he thought about the killdeer and her bent wing and keeling head and her beauty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs used in this chapter were: 
> 
> - _Go Down Easy_ , by John Martyn  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzWIcsgS0xQ
> 
> - _Suzanne_ , by Leonard Cohen  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svitEEpI07E
> 
> - _First Time Ever I Saw Your Face_ , by Roberta Flack  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqW-eO3jTVU


	12. New Skin for Old Ceremony

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains sexual themes/descriptions.

He emerged clean from the dark and everything was velvet as well as blue in his blurred vision. A figure was moving ostensibly in the watery distance. Spock’s mind; as blank as fresh snow. Unstepped, he could see clear to the horizon of himself. Limber exhaustion sat at the centre of him like a square meal. The blue swimmer and he were the sole people of their world. For a long time, they cohabitated perfectly, and their vague awareness of one another was the camaraderie that existed for two leaves sharing a stem. But the more he revelled in the nothingness, the further it receded. 

Recollections of Farius Prime crowded the landscape; the commotion and the blind escape; rigging the Romulan device; robbed, frozen and near-insanity; hallucinating; McCoy coming to the depth of that darkness and running and and and— there was no feasible end. His memory dropped off the cliff-face. He remembered squeezing into the alleyway, only to have emerged aboard the Enterprise, clean and dry. He would need to instigate a long period of meditation to recover the memories - it was most likely shock.

The figure became aware of him, turning, focused. Nurse Chapel stood by the foot of the bio-bed. Her hair was haloed around her, expression at once comely and tight with concentration. There was a time when she would appear differently, expectant of their interactions, but the Platonians had shattered their egos with their force; destroying her blind attentiveness and his cold disaffection in one unwanted kiss. They had devastated them to nothing and from that, somehow, a sprig of goodwill had grown.

‘Mr Spock,’ she said, PADD hitched on an angle at her hip. 

He blinked drily and pushed himself up onto his elbows. The sickbay was empty, and all the beds stood turned down and laundered and he floated on the smell of antiseptic and detergent. 

‘What is the current Stardate?’ 

She consulted her PADD, ’53789.6 ** _,_** you’ve been on board for twenty-four hours give or take. We’re currently at the edge of the Paulson Nebula.’

The Enterprise, safe and humming on; there were no alert signals on the panels. Spock exhaled thinly, he did a rundown of his body, flexing his hands several times; he was free of physical injuries. He glanced around again with uncertain footing.

‘Doctor McCoy has signed your case over to Doctor M’Benga,’ she said without looking up, frowning to herself, ‘he was dead on his feet when you came on board, but you were in a stable condition, so he figured he could take some time.’

Spock sat up stiffly. He cleared his throat, ‘thank you for the update.’

‘Doctor M’Benga thought you might have some neurological symptoms,’ she said, peering up at him steadily.

‘I am presently functioning normally,’ he inclined an eyebrow.

‘That’s a start,’ she said evenly, ‘I’m going to run some tests just to make sure.’

‘Neurological examination for command-level officers can only be ordered by the chief practitioner,’ Spock said, ‘Did Doctor McCoy do so?’

She sighed, ‘Unfortunately, no.’

‘In that case, I wish to forgo the examination,’ he said quietly, ‘if he should choose to enforce it when he returns, I will, of course, comply.’

‘Mr Spock, why delay the inevitable?’ she asked, leaning to one side, ‘not to mention, raise hell.’

‘The statistics may support the probability that Doctor McCoy will take issue, but I prefer to leave.’

She chuckled, glancing down again, ‘Doctor M’Benga hasn’t discharged you yet.’

‘Once again only—‘

‘The Chief Medical Officer or the Captain can enforce it,’ she sighed. She looked down at the PADD, ‘you know you’re making my job awfully difficult - and I’m on a streak of bad luck - Captain Kirk was here a half-hour ago.’

Spock became suspended, he swallowed, glancing discreetly a the seat that had been drawn up by the bed. 

‘He didn’t say where he was going, but I’m sure if he were here, he would agree,’ she said, making final notes, ‘that will about do it.’

Chapel put aside the PADD and came toward him with the medical tricorder aloft. Spock looked steadily at the opposite bed, the alternating oranges, and let her check him over; the purring thimble was a precariously living and anxious thing between her manicured fingers. 

‘A clean bill of health. Physically,’ she looked up at him and waved to a fresh set of uniform, blues, pants, socks and boots that the quartermaster had placed at the foot of the other bed. The blue sickbay robes were starchy, breaking when he moved. She left him to change.

His first steps were parlous before the ease of his own body, warm and well regulated, came to him as a comforting commonality before Spock found the memory was trapped in his marrow. He expected it would fade with time. Fade, when he could recall the precise nature of the events that led him back. The uniform let him resume some normality, or at the very least, a good pretence of it. He thanked Chapel on his way out through the office.

It was an alpha shift, and even so the corridors were in liquid respite. Crewmembers moved calmly, levelling their work with casual steps. If they were collecting data from the Paulson Nebula, then the majority of the work was undertaken by the science officers. Spock intended to go all the way to his quarters. He intended not to think of the bridge and the Captain on it before he undertook an extended meditation. Then again, he paused at the entrance to the labs, called by an urge to reinstitute the details of the Enterprise as reality. Fleeting anxiety came and went; that he was still lost, still dreaming. 

The Enterprise was quietest in those tighter, blue corridors and he stepped into its cold waters. The labs were knitted with logic at the best of times and desperate and frantic teething at the worst, forcing circles into squares against time. An ensign looked up when he passed through the first section, hubcap reams of petri dishes stood in clean order and took turns beneath microscopes, high unbacked stools on metal legs supported their study. The ordinary metronomic pull of the chronometer denoted that the rest of the universe existed. The reduction of the world to a handful of rooms and a garden suited Spock well. A calm slipped over him, nearly trancelike as he considered the projects he could pick up to gain his feet. He had several, but so much like a keen gardener, his one bouncing intuition was the trilling orchids. No doubt Sulu or one of the science officers had carried on the work in his absence, so he wasn’t liable to find that they had died. Then again, he wasn’t being driven by science alone. Spock rode the errant beat in a well-known rhythm. Nothing had changed, and yet something had moved to completion; akin to a Fibonacci sequence meeting its ordered spiral with mathematical precision. Or more lushly, the organic rhythms of natural selection fitting their environment after thousands of years of trials and errors. 

_The_ G _ardens_ were deserted as Spock crossed the organic stage. He examined the dome from the outside, condensation was thick in the glass and the thermal lighting at the rim glowed pink. Real warmth. He crossed the plank in absolute terms and the door admitted him. It was as close as he could come to the Captain without returning to the bridge, without tearing through his last strand of control to be with him. He couldn’t bear to be apart, and he couldn’t be near.

The orchids purled at his entrance, swinging away from the plank. Their dorsal sepals were translucent and pinked like white roses in blush. Their smell closely resembled beeswax fringed with coconut sugar, intoxicating in its earnestness, secreting once every seventy-two hours; it was as if they were expecting him. Spock took a deep breath and the doors slipped shut behind him. He paused to watch the orchids resume their original positions and a long time passed and they kept on; trembling at the far end. Spock followed the line-up of motion; it terminated on the other side of the dome where someone had pitched back in the seat, quiet motionless but for deep breaths. 

Spock recognised him by the crown of his head, chin tilted to his chest, sleeping fast the stolen sleep of the exhausted and broken. Spock attempted to design his next movements carefully, failed.

‘Captain?’

He stirred when Spock called to him again and looked up with a blanched expression. For the first time in all his years as Captain, he was unshaven and his eyes were palely vacant. His golden shroud had sloughed off and he stood as any other man may, as if he had worn through his soles and filed down his nails to the quick. The velvet prime, which Spock had at once coveted and feared, lay at their feet.

‘Welcome aboard, Mr Spock.’

‘Thank you. It is satisfactory to be back.’

‘I-ah,’ his voice caught midway. He coughed and crossed his arms. His eyes glassed, ‘I have been looking after the orchids.’

‘I appreciate that,’ he said, tempted with each word to look away from his spectacular vulnerability, ‘However, there was no need - I had assigned two ensigns to their upkeep.’

Kirk seemed to find enough footing to be the Captain for an instant, but it withered quickly, ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘But I wanted to be sure they would be in good knick when you came back - I don’t think we’ll make orbit at Delinia again.’

‘No, perhaps not.’

There was a valley of nothing and the Enterprise asserted her existence in a hum, the whistling hulls and voids. Spock began hurtling through, unable to parse one thought from the next and the roughness that had sanded down his memory of Farius Prime became aberrant against him again. 

‘I-’

‘—A-’ their voices mangled head-on.

‘Go ahead,’ Jim was quicker on the draw.

‘Are you well?’ he asked. It fell flat between them.

‘It’s been a long, long week,’ he waved vaguely — a half-truth.

Spock followed the movement into the orchids, cuffed on the backhand. He kept him in his periphery; what came next could only be reduced to one of two bearable conclusions. Either to accept what they were without coyness or immediately terminate his commission. Spock fiercely recognised that time had come to cut down whatever lay between them, instead of strangling it in these bursts when the urge to be close came and went, when they needed one another and at other times recognised they had long ago stopped being friends, or even brothers. In any case, being close did not preclude doing harm. 

He looked at him, finally and drew a breath, ‘Jim,’ he said softly. 

If they had been anywhere else, he might not have heard it, and Spock wouldn’t have had the courage to repeat it. That other string of existence unfolded, to say his name in his quarters, the bridge, on wind licked land - anywhere, anywhere else, and his name would not have survived.

Jim reached out to him, stepping closer, hands like a wonder reaching for the light. He carried a certain melancholy that he even if he grasped him, Spock would fade through like the sun. But his palms landed on the sockets of his shoulders, and they were firm and firmer still, and every finger made an impression. 

Spock stared at him, slumping low with the tiredness he had denied and evening their difference in height. Jim traced his shoulders in a sweep to his neck and held his face between his hands like water.

‘Spock?’ he said it like a plea this time. His breath keeled over Spock’s mouth, a mild drift of peppermint and apple. He nodded and in answer, Jim skimmed his cheeks with his thumbs and outlined his jaw in broad strokes. 

Spock swallowed the air between them and sunk into the sensation of his fingers. Jim’s eyes were redshot with raw feeling as he touched him. His thumbprint caught every nerve ending in his lower lip when he traced it, moving to the points of his ears and over his temples; he brushed his fringe back and revealed the very faint wrinkles. No corner of the universe could shelter them from time.

‘Are you alright?’ his hands rested at the edge of his collar.

‘I am,’ Spock murmured.

The condensation on the glass ran, the orchids sighed. Spock shut his eyes and let himself go away on the whirring of the engine. Jim leaned in and his stubbled cheek hung beside his and sparked a wildfire. Spock reached out and held him close. He was infinitely warm in his arms, thickset coils of muscles sheeting his bones, heart beating into Spock’s lungs; slow for a Vulcan and running full tilt for a Human. He counted: one hundred and seventy-two, seventy-three, seventy-four, five, six beats per minute, one hundred and seventy-six; the number became wedged in his throat. His hands purchased around Jim’s lower back, causing his breath to hitch. They were enfolded, tighter and tighter, squeezing lightyears out of each other, a million lost and stolen glances, and hundreds of nights. One thousand four hundred and eighty-three night they had put their heads down on their separate pillows, and for five-hundred and something-change nights the last thought that had drifted in Spock had been Jim. He could not find enough time in the world to hold him. 

Jim adjusted in his arms, turning into him until his nose brushed by Spock’s and kissing the corner of his lips, just an edge, maybe his cheek. Spock turned into the heat of his mouth and kissed him back, close-mouthed and with a painful softness. Surprise and a dizzying relief rippled through as his mental shields levelled between them. As soon as he withdrew, Jim’s smile unspooled like wefts of gold. He kissed him again impulsively and Spock glided on the curve of his mouth. 

When Spock saw his eyes again, his pupils had blown and his lashes were dark. Spock took his hand and lowered it to his side where his heart hung like a feeding hummingbird. Jim’s hand contracted under his.

Jim said his name in that unique, sigh-filled intonation. It carved a rogue smile on his mouth.

‘Spock,’ he said again, ‘I rather stay, but they’ll be expecting me on the bridge.’

‘I understand,’ Spock tamped down the urge to brush his hair back and noted that he may need a haircut soon and that he would prefer for him to miss the appointment. An urge rose in him to see Jim disordered and spent and flushed - uncertain that he could ever evoke this reaction - he doubled-down on a commitment to at least try, to _try_ and bring him to such heights. He made half-moons over his golds in a faint promise to himself. Now past the barrier, Spock was surging in leaps and bounds to prove himself and therefore his decision, the correct one: fulfilling not only mentally, but physically too.

‘It will only be for a few more hours,’ Jim said, he touched him freely now, he curled his hand into fists and skated knuckles down his back, touched his elbows, his sides; all preludes to letting go. Spock followed his lead and they stood close, but apart. 

‘And you need rest,’ Jim added, he levelled his eyes and they became sad, ‘I can’t imagine what you must have gone through.’

‘I may use the time to familiarise myself with the ship’s current course, and the nebula.’

His smile returned, weathered but distinct, ‘Yes, of course. You prefer that?’

‘Indeed.’

‘Well,’ he tilted his head, ‘my personal logs are up to date, I can get them from my quarters for you.’

A beat. 

‘You’re also welcome to -ah- pick them up yourself,’ he said, flushing, ‘they’re at my desk.’

‘That will be suitable,’ Spock nodded. 

Jim chuckled and looked down, ‘Spock, if you don’t want to - well, what I mean is, there is no need to—’

‘Jim,’ he stopped him, ‘I would prefer to…be with you.’

Then he smiled at him so sweetly from under his lashes, and his face was cast in the pink light in such a way that Spock couldn’t resist moving forward again. He watched Jim’s eyes flutter shut before his own and kissed him goodbye.

* * *

_—routine scientific data is being collected, and so far nothing peculiar or alarming is present - the crew is in fine spirits, albeit a little bored - there is something of a lull without Mr Spock leading the research. Is it even surprising that efficiency ratings are down? Well, that’s not as important as what it confirms - our five-year mission wouldn’t have enjoyed a tenth of its success without him. Or we may not have made it past so many incidents…_

_In any case - our instruments are ionised and we have minimal communication. The bridge continues to scan within a parsec’s radius for the VSS Volan, but the Orion ship is past due by nearly a day._

_The weight of the decision is becoming more substantial as we go. I put my trust in pirates…did I make that decision out of panic? - without my better angels present? I wasn’t willing to listen to McCoy when he tried to speak up against contacting the Orions, that was my first mistake, but I couldn’t see any alternatives without wasting time. Time we didn’t have, and we wouldn’t have gotten - certainly not from Admiral Komack. Even if I incite General Order 9, he is likely to overrule it. On that front - the board review is approaching, a little over four days. If there is a silver lining in all this, it’s that I won’t have to face the next year of the mission without Spock and Bones. Captains have been deemed psychologically unfit for a lot less than I’ve done. Whatever happens, the facts can’t be denied. There is a movement that has already started._

_I’m not speaking from a place of regret - I took the only chance I had to get Spock back. I would do it again. I would do it again even if I never saw the inside of another starship — “Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.”. Kirk out._

‘Log, end.’

‘Computer, display current Enterprise coordinates and starmap.’

Spock steepled his hands under his chin. An abstracted Omicron sector shone at him. There was the red foreign-bodied marker for the VSS Volan which was now within their sights, hanging, recuperating after its return from Farius Prime. He leaned into the seat, attempting to puzzle together what he had experienced on the planet with this information. There were too many variables. Too many variables and he was captured by unrelated matters, eyes going gauzy on the points of contention, those evolving suns and the net cast by the nebula. He brought two fingers to his lips and traced with the edge of a nail the memory of Jim’s mouth. 

It was then almost inevitable that Jim’s copy of _Leaves of Grass_ lay open beside the computer. The red velvet tongue lay across pages where the spine had softened, coffee-stain across three lines,

_Power enjoying—elbows stretching—fingers clutching,_

_Arm’d and fearless—eating, drinking, sleeping, loving,_

He could not be made to focus, _I would do it again_ and _bad begins_ \- and yes, Spock was unwell with wanting, desire, like he did not know could exist. Around him lay evidence of Jim’s private self, a framed photograph of himself and his brother, other books, handwritten scraps of paper and as its crown, their chessboard — their last game had been aborted by the debris storm. 

No matter, they could - and would, try again. Spock slipped into the brook of a reverie and the stream widened to a river of impromptu meditation. He was cast off on the surface of his mind, reordering and aligning his senses, bringing sharp awareness to his hands where they were on the desk, and running on well-learned rhythms. As he went, organising his thoughts as a bookkeeper might reshelve books after a storm, he recognised the violence he had witnessed, the scent and texture of blood in artificial light—shining, his legs burning with cold as he ran and the trickling water pouring him into madness. He arranged everything and still, there were missing pieces, an empty shelf. Amnesia was rare, but not unheard of even in the most disciplined minds, and the remedy had always been time and focus on relayering the experiences. The initial groundwork being to emerge from the alleyway, to see two doors facing him and being told not to stop at any cost. Left door—white-out—traffic of their line—steps and and and—he clutched at nothing; he would need a witness, Doctor McCoy, to trigger completion of the memory. 

Oh twenty-one hours and change, fifteen, sixteen minutes, he came back to the dim quarters. Spock blinked several times. He had lost hours. The computer activated when he shifted in the seat, the starmap and sector. Bone-deep exhaustion was realised in him. 

‘Computer, off.'

The screen went out; there was another voice. 

‘Spock?’ 

He stepped to the divider’s threshold and let his eyes adjust; Jim lay over the covers, supine and uniformed, no boots. His hair was disordered. 

‘I apologise, I did not mean to meditate,’ Spock said, casting his eyes down, it seemed like an intrusion to be standing there.

‘No,’ his voice was soft, ‘I didn’t want to interrupt you.’

Spock nodded, ‘If you would like to be alone—‘

‘No,’ Jim said more firmly, ‘No, please stay with me.’

Spock looked at him where he was pushed up on his elbows, belly rising and falling, hair tousled and honeyed. 

‘Come here,’ he said.

A thread of midwestern accent had dropped into his unguarded voice. Spock went to him and sat on the other side of the bed, glanced at him while he suppressed a yawn. Jim pat a hand across his back while he took off his boots, right then left, and tucked them to the side. 

They lay down in the light of the nebula filtering through the porthole. Spock turned onto his side and watched him. Jim was infinitely gold and his eyes shut as soon as he dented the pillow. His features shifted and loosened, a play of light, fickle yellow stars and the plumes of baby blue in curtains of gossamer and strings of burning white sands. All around them the nebula underwent the ecstatic motions of birthing a star, a sun. In millions of years when the first inhabitants of the system slid from the ocean and eddies, they would have an impression of the starmen that passed in their infancy. Spock could believe this in the same ethereal hues of mysticism in which Vulcan revolved. 

Eyes still shut, Jim raised a hand and Spock reflected it with his own and their fingers met in the middle with inclinations as bare as leaves curling together, entwining. Guts string-pulled, Spock allowed their palms to skim and land onto the mattress between them like some ancient comet. The bed was narrow and their hands stopped them from going over each edge, still unpractised and bleary with exhaustion. Jim opened his eyes to slits. He used the anchor between them to shuffle closer, he lay close enough that Spock could feel the drifts of his breath on his cheeks, sleep-warm. In a closer view visages lost their intensity, but he became perilously alive. The lines around his mouth and the triad of crows feet at each eye and the vertical half-inch wrinkle in his brow struck Spock as signs of his mortality and the toll of the past four years; the hair growing on his jaw and chin were a fine straw brown and was patchy at the cleft of his chin, his eyes were deep and they went back for years and years and years and reached forward too. Spock disengaged his hand and reached for him and made this sacred pilgrimage across his face. A noble, very Human face. Under his brows, there were hairs that sat out of order. His mouth was wide and goodnatured and just under his bottom lip, there was small dip maybe some forgotten scar or a natural occurrence. Midway through, Jim took his hand and brought his knuckles to his mouth and kissed the back of his hand. Spock shattered under his gaze. When he let their hands rest, they were knitted together again, tightly enough to whiten bands from pressure. 

‘I’m tired, Spock,’ Jim whispered, eventually. He swallowed and continued. ‘For a very long time, I thought it was the ship…or command. But I think I knew it was this.’

‘The Enterprise has been our home.’

‘No,’ he said, ‘Not even the Enterprise — she’s a beautiful, elaborate production. But all she does is take, and all you do is give.’

‘I respectfully disagree,’ Spock said gently, allowing the end-twist of a smile to come through, ‘I believe the balance has tipped in my favour.’

Jim chuckled, an impression of his humour flickered at Spock’s gates like a storm-surging lamp. 

‘So, then, we both think we win,’ he said. ‘And we do.’

‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘It is an agreeable compromise.’

His Captain grew serious, he pulled his hand away and pushed Spock flat onto his back and went down with him, half across his chest while Spock’s chin nestled at the crown of his head, those tickling cornsilk strands. Jim smoothed his blues down to the hem and put a leg over his, his erection was faintly apparent against his hip. Spock's own hardness lay under the lower, inner side of Jim’s thigh. Spock revelled in the faint friction. Despite this, neither of them moved to resolve their arousals, captured by lead-boned tiredness and unwillingness to part. It was its own kind of congress, to lay and to do nothing and to consider the potential of what would come when they were both rested. Spock shut his eyes and an errant expression of slipping into Jim went through him. He wondered, what it would be like to push into him and feel enclosed in him and lay then, for a long time, similar to now, not moving. To fall asleep inside him and become his lover, so tenderly held that all the world receded to distant points of inconsequence for as long as they could remain coupled. His exhale ruffled Jim's hair, his cock twitched, he felt his mouth curve into a smile against his chest. 

‘We’ll have time,’ Jim said softly, he was falling asleep fast. ‘I’ll make time, Spock.’

_Make time,_ as if he could manipulate the fabric of the universe, pull it and ruck and fold it at his feet like a sheet, pull it over them and be lost. He would certainly try and try and try until he made him his. Use his arms to pull the world apart and together again so that they could subsist in a single trench, untouched.

Spock kissed the top of his head, he smelled him where he was most essentially himself. A vague scent of vanilla shampoo, sweat and salt. As they both tumbled, Jim’s heart thumped readily against his side, while his own answered at four times the pace. 

When it slowed to a fifth, he was gone. Spock lay very still and counted the thumps like a parched man counts raindrops gathering in an oasis. With the arm that was now curled around Jim, he reached up and stroked his hair, to the nape of his neck. There, the colour was not blond, but an ochre-brown, shorter, masculine to no end. He drifted in this feeling for a long time until he entered the waters of sleep with him, rocking toward some distant shore on a public ferry with red railings. _Where?_ He recognised he had slipstreamed against an impression of Jim’s dreams even as he travelled. They were coaxed and comforted in the pleats of the nebula’s skirts. 

Then there was no more than a few punchy, velvet-black moments before Spock jumpstarted awake, jolted by the emptiness, the passage of air where Jim’s body had been. There was a voice funnelling through the room, in a low, wavering timber - _done laid around and played around_ \- _duh duh duh - Johnny can’t go too long duh-duh-duh - ridin’ after me - wanna see my honey wanna him bad ah-ah_ \- mingling and skipping out with the running water, the electric razor bassing up. Spock lay listening, staring at the bulkhead and the shimmering greens and purples. He realised he was still aroused, somehow more heavily and terribly than before and the strokes of Jim’s voice were burning him up, building up in those breathy, humming sounds - _he’s the best guy this poor boy ever had ahh -_ the water stopped, a towel was being shaken out. Spock sat up, put his legs over the side and waited, unsure for what. It was 0400 hours, two hours and change left before they were pushed back into their reality. He was suddenly awkward with the knowledge of where they had been, and how distant they were and how hard his erection seemed all of a sudden, as if he would never find relief. He had the urge to flee, but Jim stepped out of the bathroom at that moment. 

He stepped past the divider shirtless and smiled at him gently and effortlessly. His feet were bare and his skin was rosy with the heat of the sonics and he was now clean-shaven and bright-eyed. Spock clenched his jaw, the anxious fluttering in his gut was rocked by a shock of pleasure. Jim brought with him the smell of his soap, and his clean sweat, his eyes flickered for an instant to Spock's lap, uniform slacks too tight to hide a multitude of sins. Spock’s legs fell open a half-inch of their own volition.

‘Did you sleep well?’ Jim asked, meeting his eyes.

‘I did,’ and Spock swallowed. 

He came closer until he was at last parenthesised between his legs. He was confident with his foray and it emboldened Spock to arch up a little closer, ‘And you?’

Jim nodded. He teethed the inside of his lips. Spock was reminded that he had looked at him like that on the bridge once, and he attempted to reach back into time. But he was buoyed and could not dive within himself. Jim leaned his forearms against his shoulders; the pressure hurt some and housed them both.

‘Spock?’

‘Yes.’ _Yes,_ he was flying on a high wind.

‘Kiss me, please.’

Spock brought their mouths together. And Jim was sweet and kept smiling and opened his mouth and deepened the kiss. He tasted of newfangled toothpaste and held onto the nape of Spock’s neck. He bore down on his mouth with more weight. Spock clutched him close by his lower back and Jim tilted forward, putting a knee on the edge of the mattress, wedging it between Spock’s thighs. They parted and there was a wet _pop._

‘You know how long I’ve been wanting to do that?’ he asked in wonder, wiping the corner of Spock’s mouth with his thumb.

_Wanting, wanting_ \- it curled into Spock’s centre. He let go and reached for the hem of his science blues and undershirt at once, Jim helped them over his head. Spock shuffled back to the centre of the bed and Jim settled onto his lap and kissed him again and it was disordered this time, tilting left then right, breaking and resurging on their inhales. Spock’s hands drifted up the lower-clefts of his shoulders and back down over his ass, fingers rushing tracts of skin; he was all at once soft and strong underneath, his belly curved into Spock’s sometimes.

Jim kissed the corner of his mouth and moved his lips over his cheek, his jaw and neck. His fingers went through the downy hair on Spock’s chest and some strands were accidentally pulled and fired rogue signals of pleasure-pain percepts at him. Spock hucked soft cries, he buried them under his tongue, smothered to moans. Jim opened his mouth against his throat and he fell backwards onto the mattress and Jim used his vantage point to go further, laying over his stomach, beginning to roll his hips, once and then again - on the second stroke his cock lined up at Spock’s inner-thigh through their pants. Spock attempted to reconcile his body with the body he had had all his life. No—he was making him new, making his flesh something else. He was diligently attempting to set him ablaze.

Spock touched the top of Jim’s head, running his hair between his fingers as his head moved at an even pace over his breastbone—wetting the skin, making the hair there lay flat with his tongue. Jim glanced up at him quickly and his meld-points passed between Spock’s fingers in the motion. 

Spock howled: he had tapped for a moment into the centre of Jim’s pleasure, and recognised that in spite of how effortlessly he moved he was holding back. He had an abstract impression of— _I want him in me, anywhere, anywhere now now now now please let this keep going up all the way, in me—_ Spock squeezed his eyes shut and a tear rolled back into his hairline. 

Jim shot up onto his knees over him; his eyes were stormy, afraid. He was panting, ‘Spock?’

He took another second to open his eyes. His hands were shaking as he touched the sides of Jim’s thighs in an attempt to reassure him. 

‘I-I accidentally came into contact with your meld points.’

‘When I looked up?’

‘Yes?’

‘Did I hurt you?’

‘No,’ he raised a brow, ‘I received an impression of your thoughts…and desires. Their strength was…overwhelming.’

Jim blinked twice, he laughed suddenly, dipping his head into the crook of Spock’s neck. A vague draft of his thrilled embarrassment leaked into Spock. 

‘Don’t go after me all at once, Mr Spock,’ he said bashfully.

Spock kissed his laughing mouth, cupping his jaw, ‘I do not object,’ he whispered, stroking his fresh-shaven skin, ‘on the contrary, I was affected to such an extent because I share your proclivity.’

Jim huffed breathlessly, his cock jumped where it was pressed into Spock’s thigh, he shifted his ass up, half-moaning, ‘I don’t know how you manage to do it.’

‘What might that be?’ Spock’s hands tightened on his thighs, fingers digging in over fabric. Over cotton.

‘That,’ Jim’s eyes shone, all of him was shining singing glimmering with his pleasure. Spock’s heart was tenderly overtaking his entire body. First, his gut cloyed with the razor winged dragonflies of Regis III until they had invaded all of him. He was cut up, he was shredded in his light — that glow. ‘You’re verbose, and it drives me out of m-my mind. And I think you know that.’

With that Jim slid down and forward, thrusting against his thigh one deliberate stroke, holding his face saying, ‘at least now you know.’

‘Do I? Annoyance was not the emotion I had hoped to elicit,’ Spock managed, he bucked up in return, making Jim’s breath stutter. He laughed breathlessly as he descended from the spike of pleasure. 

‘Spock…Spock,’ Jim gathered closer still, he spoke into his mouth, lips brushing his, teeth tapping, ‘Spock, I’m not letting you get away with it this time.’

He kissed him. He robbed his breath, opening and pulling and matching him. And like that, Jim had regained some temporary lead, and Spock was lost under him, open for the taking. Going down again they did not breath for a long time. Jim chased the all cogent thought away by rolling his tongue over one nipple and capturing it between his front teeth delicately, looking up to gauge Spock’s reaction; a punch-out of air bowed his chest like the sail of a ship. Jim shut his eyes and moved to the other one, equating the attention until they were verdant. He moved back from Spock’s grasp and went onto his knees on the floor between Spock’s legs. 

Kneeling there, mouth shining with their kisses, split stone-fruit, wet with sap, he said, ‘Spock, you’re beautiful.’

He unclasped and unzipped his pants, helping him cant his hips up to pull them halfway down his thighs—letting his cock loll out—Jim wrapped a hand around it gently and then firmly and pumped him experimentally, slowly, curves and lines of his palm going over one ridge and then the other, thumb pressing into the slit and coming away slicked with his natural, scentless lubricant. Spock’s eyes burned shut, Jim pulled his pants the rest of the way down and off, he kissed his thighs, his knees. He reached down, took off his socks off one at a time and spent a moment with his hands over his ankles where the elastics had left impressions. Every move he made sang his praises, unflinchingly and fully. 

Jim took his cock again and exhaled at a knife-edge. Spock finally looked down, Jim up, his lashes cast long shadows under his eyes, honey-hazel, he opened his mouth and took in the head of his cock. Eyes shut, he groaned around the tip — Spock white-knuckled his traps. Jim swallowed a breath and went down further. Tongue laid flatly at the underside, cheeks beginning to hollow out with the proceedings - _ah-ah-ah wanna see my honey wanna see him bad_ \- the thought boiled to the surface of Spock, Jim’s voice, the same timber coming was from the base of his throat now as he began to suck him earnestly, taking more each time he moved, both hands on his knees, moving to hook behind them by the wrists. The wet and languorous sounds of his mouth against his saliva-wet cock went hard-line into Spock’s head. He rode out the sensation, the basin of his gut tightened up toward a climax. Jim pulled back and off at the nadir, he pushed Spock’s hands off his shoulders and guided them to his head, through his hair. He leaned down again, glancing up. Spock’s grip instinctively tightened, pulling a little as Jim’s chin brushed the tip of his cock.

‘Open your legs,’ he said lowly and he did and his testicles rolled toward him on the covers and a waft of cold air hit his perineum. Jim put his face in the corner of his inner-thigh, kissed him, opened his mouth there and looked up, eyes-rolling. ‘Is this good?’

Spock swallowed, he nodded, the words wouldn’t come, ‘Jim,’ he managed, ‘Jim.’

He bent low again, pulling him closer by his ass, kissing his thighs, wetting them, nose brushing through the trail of hair over his dick before pulling it up and flattening the bed of his tongue on his balls and sucking on one before he took him in again. Spock’s hands tightened, tightened, tightened in his hair, Jim cried around his cock and Spock forced himself to loosen his hands and then he was coming in great bursts, he was a little too big to bottom out into his throat, but he felt him swallow, he heard himself screaming, slipping, blooming, burning. Out, out, away, away, the nebula was a witness to their congress, to Jim’s nostrils flaring and pulling away as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, smearing cum, Spock rushed low and kissed him, tasting himself on his tongue until they were both gasping. 

Spock brought him into his arms and helped him onto his feet and at last divested him of his pants in a clean swipe and Jim stepped out of the legs. He stood naked in the narrow light, hard cock bobbing and red from pressure, balls drawn up tightly from anticipation. The blues and yellows and shimmering greens were over his belly, a trail of hair started from the bottom of his navel and led between his legs, he dripped precum. He had become overripe fruit for him and Spock wanted to lean in and take him all in; Jim was a little shorter than him, but he was thicker, maybe even by a lot—he was circumcised. Spock paused, letting his hands pet down his sides, revelling in the soft, warm flesh. He wanted it to be good for him, he wanted to make him scream, but he had never done this before. 

‘You don’t have to,’ Jim said breathlessly, ‘It’s alright, Spock.’

Jim leaned forward on his shoulder and took his cock in his own hand, pumping slowly, groaning toward relief. Spock put his hand over his immediately, stroking once, twice with him at an inconvenient angle. Jim’s voice hit out, _Spock, ah-ah_ _-_ and he let go and Spock took over, he swept him close. Jim fell onto the bed beside him, shuffling his head over the pillow while Spock lay against him on his side, he was semi-hard again and trapped his cock against his thigh. 

Spock leaned over him and kissed him and kissed him and took both his hands and held them tightly at his sides and Jim’s back arched off the bed in pulses, his cock springing up with the movement helplessly, choking cries into his mouth. Spock slid a hand down his chest and began to pump him slowly. He delved further into his mouth messily, slow, slow and fast and their kisses fell out of other, Jim shoved his face into his neck - _like that, j-just like that, Spock Spock ah Spock_ \- he moaned. Spock let go for a moment, he pumped himself several times and let his hand come away lubricated. His cock filled his hand and was slippery now andJim arched toward him hard, twisting, he coiled an arm around his neck and overthrew Spock’s balance, making him collapse on top of him. His diaphragm retracted in several hits as his semen spread between them, Spock gripped the corner of his hip hard enough to bruise him purple, green, yellow, pink—superior in strength, strength enough to break him if he wasn't careful—he came again too. 

When he finished and light tremors ran under his skin Spock embraced him. Jim held him back, his breathing fell hard, and a drop of sweat rolled from his neck onto Spock’s cheek. 

Spock skated on and on in the sensation at a descending ebb. The weight of Jim remained immediate and anchored him to the present and his breathing eventually smoothed out too. 

It was a long long time later when they moved. It took Spock a second to convince himself to let go when Jim rolled onto his back. He stayed on his side and watched him stand up, his cock was soft and inoffensive amongst his short curls now and there were streaks of disrupted cum on his thighs and stomach, both of theirs, the pearl white and the transparent. The sight was somehow brutally tender, Jim Kirk, razed and rebuilt and entirely held in dim galactic light, stained with their pleasure. Spock swallowed and watched him go to the bathroom. The water ran and a moment later he returned with a damp towel, he sat by him and inclined it.

‘May I?’

Spock rolled onto his back. He serenely watched him move the fabric to his chest, wipe his skin and bringing a green blush with each clean stroke. Then, he cleaned himself, stood up and discarded it. On his way back he turned up the temperature control. He lay beside him and Spock turned to him. 

Jim smiled; his eyes were under a faraway fog. He reached out and his fingers trembled before he touched Spock’s cheek, stroking the hollow of his eye with a thumb. Spock took his hand and kissed the inside of his wrist, once, twice, so very, utterly slowly.Jim gripped the nape of his neck and kissed him. He pulled back and lay there and thought for a moment, then said, ‘May I ask you something?’ his voice was raw with echoes of their lovemaking. It made Spock half-hard, already, again.

He assented in silence, fledged entire, coming loose at every seam.

‘When we spoke last time, while you were on Farius Prime - you used a term - Vulcan, I’d guess.’

Spock took some shallow air, ‘ _Ashayam_?’

‘What does it mean?’

‘There is no exact translation.’

‘Try for me.’

_Anything, anything,_ ‘It means “beloved”. The first syllable, _ah-sh,_ denotes falling - to flow as water in a stream - it is the prefix of the term “love”, _ash-au_. The second part, _‘ayam’_ , means “within”.’

‘To flow within?’

‘Approximately.’

He smiled at him with a melancholy air, he stroked patterns into his neck, ‘I’m afraid I don’t have the vocabulary to match that.’

They both felt his voice vibrate, ‘if you ever want to, you may use the same term.’

‘If ever?’ he asked and didn't wait for an answer, ’ _Ashayam,_ ’ it rolled off Jim’s tongue with unpractised sincerity. Spock rearranged their hands into mirror ta’als. 

‘It has never been directed at me,’ Spock muttered, watching their fingers, waves of affection and arousal marched in. Adoration too. 

Jim was silent for a few seconds, watching him, thinking. 

‘You have another question,’ Spock said. ‘You may ask me anything you wish to.’

‘Yes, but you don’t owe me answers.’

‘Ask me,’ he said softly. 

Jim took a second to arrange his words, ‘have you been with anyone - before?’

‘I have. Once.’ he said lowly. ‘He was the music instructor’s son, and we briefly attended the same college.’

‘Before you joined Starfleet,’ Jim concluded. 

Spock nodded.

‘So, not even then?’

‘No,’ Spock thought about Sern, that brief and anomalous tryst, ‘he had no cause to say such a thing - I did not either.’

Jim flattened their palms against the mattress tightly, mesmerising him. Spock could feel him digesting the information. 

‘And T’Pring?’

‘She never desired me,’ he said, ‘nor I, her. We were bonded before this was apparent to me, and I never challenged the bond on the basis that I would be spared the Pon Farr due to my Human blood. T’Pring was potentially aware of both these facts and pursued Stonn freely. 

In any case, I believe I am sexually ambivalent toward the opposite sex.’

‘Yes?’ a pert grin played on Jim’s mouth, his eyes flashed. 

‘Yes,’ Spock answered, ‘I am, for the most part, exclusively attracted to men.’

Jim’s fingers flattened in his palm, and he kissed him again, very deeply. Spock watched him and considered what he was going to say next. He made him remain close and added, ‘In reality, I believe it was _this,_ that allowed me to survive.’

When Jim didn’t answer him, Spock began to withdraw. But he slung an arm around him, vice-close to stop him, ‘Good,’ he whispered. 

So it went on and on for a long time and Jim held him and they were too boneless to move far, becoming lost for long drifts of time to semi-conscious states. The bed was narrow but they made do and in its own way, it was appealing to be close-bodied and entwined. Amongst all the dust and gas and housed by the ship they were arrested and Spock memorised sundry scent of Jim’s body and their sex.

‘Come on,’ Jim whispered eventually. He sat up and brushed Spock’s hair back and kissed his brow, ‘We have to get ready.’

And so their first night together ended and they imperceptibly slipped into the after. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still on a folk music kick, and Mr Cohen delivered the title. Thank you for reading as always, update coming in a week!
> 
> I 107% made up the Vulcan etymology of 'ashayam' using what I could scrape together from previously known words.


	13. The Comet is Coming

After the steam had settled into condensation they were both remade and he left him breathing hard and ruinous under a patina of soap. He watched him beyond the sheet of water and glass in abstract terms; slipping into swan-white folds of a towel to dry himself and again and again reveal slivers of skin in the slipshod process. As he was about to leave the bathroom Spock cleared a three-fingered streak in the glass to see him go, and catch the intent still alight in his eye. It could never end now. And as the glass fogged over in patches the door shut behind him and Spock was left under the beating water with his chest busting in a funk. 

The dark and light began to break apart like the ancient sand in the temple of Surak. The connection solidified as Spock washed his hair into thick spumes and shut his eyes. It seemed to be exceptionally profane and timely at once. It was awe which was flooding him, that same strange ecstasy that only seemed to be possessed by Earth's sculptors - perhaps sculptors the galaxy over - who were in the practice of moulding bodies. And helplessly he was swept into discordant stretches of his past and the water became needle-bursts of sediment rising from the desert floor. 

And he too was draped in solemn white for visitation of the temple — _kup-il-lamekh yelong fai-tor tri-falek._ The flesh of the ruins was always prepossessing. Even in their ancient crumble-nosed and ear-filed states, they stood five meters tall. Out of the four, one had occasion to bear a _lirpa_ , staring into the mouth of the temple at approaching threats; a lyre rested on the breastplate of another; and the _ahn-woon_ strung low from a messianic, war-soft hand of the third. All had witnessed the shadows of the centuries and while there was academic contention regarding their identities, their links to pre-reform Vulcan were affirmed hundreds of times over. _The Four Pillars of Existence;_ conflict, copulation, art and the last figure — destroyed millennia ago by ravages of time and no doubt the preoccupations of the first three — death. 

All that remained of him was a caved head laid at the feet of the lyrist _._ His face was young and naturally tragic, and if he heard her music, then it was with his one remaining ear pointed heaven-wise. Being half-levelled with the sand, he was considered dearest and most distant and demanded attention. During the high season of _kahs-wan,_ when some children did not return from the forge, stoic-jawed, high-backed guardians would arrive to greet the fourth, laying sacred objects on the pillows of sand beside him; wood-carved creatures; locks of hair bowed with twine; chess pieces; clay pots; and that most haunting —family robes with unemptied pockets of curiosities—pebbles, dried and rare flowers, and gnarled nuts.  At the end of the season, there was a celebration of rebirth, and the sapling _katras,_ as well as the _katras_ of all those known to be dead with no body of proof, were cast into fires as represented by their possessions. Like the objects disintegrating into the atmosphere, it was believed that a certain form of rebirth may be possible - and it depended on the individual Vulcan to take this literally or metaphorically. The ceremonies were open to all who wished to attend and from the belly of the temple, the standing guardians would watch the fires and, _kaiidth_ , they would affirm until the end. 

The water had beaten the suds from Spock's head and he stood uncertain as to why he could think of nothing but the flaming trinkets. It could be that there was melancholy in the revelry that had passed between himself and Jim, that at each point of leaving, they could be leaving forever. He was shaken, recognising that in a way he was mourning for the night that had just passed. Ceremonies of grief were always inadequate to their undertaking.

‘Spock?’ Jim’s voice found him like a lighthouse beam, coming through the door. 

‘Yes.’

‘We're on the bridge soon - green tea?’

A pause, the water crunched, ‘Yes, thank you.’

And then he was gone, and Spock leaned against the glass and breathed through rivulets of water and shut away from the odd infusion of memory. Something was amiss and he would have to spend time - more than he could afford now - to recognise and solve it through deep meditation. 

He stepped out and dried himself, then returned to his own quarters to dress. It was desolate and cold after a night of disuse and he only spent long enough there to dry his hair before returning to Jim’s quarters. 

Fresh bed sheets rose in an orange wave and fell in impressions of motion. Spock stopped just outside the door; it was unbearably intimate to watch him make what had been _their_ bed for the night, standing an inch shyer without his boots.  His hands were patrician in their care as he pulled on one corner.  Spock went to him and picked up opposite edges of the sheets and pulled them taut, anchored. As they lifted the sheets again and brought them down Jim smiled, mostly inwards and Spock sensed a brilliant flash of affection and amusement. 

When they finished, steam was still curling over their cups on the desk. Jim sat down and exhaled. He stretched his arms above his head and entwined his knuckles and they popped dully. 

‘Did you have a chance to finish listening to the logs last night?’ he asked under a yawn, picking up his coffee. Even though it was synthesised the smell was rich and immediate. 

‘Indeed. I shall spend some time collating my report for the review.’

Jim exhaled into his cup, ‘I have a feeling Komack will over-turn General Order 9. He isn’t likely to take kindly to evidence.’

He steepled his hands, ‘evidence should not prerequisite emotion, that defeats the purpose. However, you may be correct.’

‘Whatever happens, Nessa and her crew will still need protection,’ he said, ‘if the brass doesn’t see fit to give it to them…’ he rubbed his eyes, ‘Spock, I gave her my word, I’m responsible.’

‘As am I,’ Spock said steadily, ‘and Dr McCoy to an extent. In any case, we now have first-hand evidence of tensions on Farius Prime. Starfleet will have no choice but to launch an investigation. If not by the Enterprise, then another ship.’

‘I don’t want to spend the last months at war,’ Jim said softly.

Spock sipped his tea and it sparked a line through him. He suppressed a shiver; an echo of rain fell in him, the tepid blood wetting the asphalt and bodies dropping, the howls winding through the rained night. He was awakened by Jim grasping his wrist. 

‘—Spock?’ he must have been talking. 

‘I apologise, I was…preoccupied.’

Jim’s eyes were stormy, ‘Doctor M’Benga’s logs mentioned you skipped out early. But I guess that's the pot calling the kettle black.’

Spock considered averting the conversation, but Jim took his hand so gently and wholly. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘I may be experiencing some memory trauma,’ he began, ‘It is not uncommon, but I require a witness to complete my recollection.’

‘Amnesia?’

‘A similar phenomenon,’ he said, ‘it is somewhat complicated by my Vulcan neurology - the pathways of my mind are more ingrained in each sense.’

Jim put his cup down and laid his other hand over Spock’s, ‘Why didn’t you tell me sooner?’

‘It is not particularly uncommon, especially after stressful events. I did not think it merited concern until I had spoken to Doctor McCoy.’

Jim looked down, he ran a thumb over the back of Spock’s hand, without their fingerpads meeting explicitly - even under Vulcan terms - it was an affectionate gesture. Spock received an impression of his empathy, opening to him. It was an invitation to share the burden.

‘McCoy would be your witness?’

‘Presuming that he remembers everything, which seems very likely, yes.’

‘It’s not often that I’ve seen Bones like he was when you came aboard,’ Jim said thoughtfully, ‘He was quiet, and he asked for a favour - which seemed reasonable enough.’

‘What was it?’

‘He said, “Let me get myself together, and I’ll tell you everything...” - that was all.’

Spock jammed up into the planet surface again, there was an echo of the cracking shots on the horizon, crude artillery and the smell…there were scents that he had no sight to yet. He bowed his head and shut his eyes and said, ‘That is a reasonable request.’

From their time together, from the things that Jim had told him he knew no violence could live up to what he experienced on Tarsus IV. After all, Spock had looked into Kodos’ eyes and known as much in a moment. And yet, he now found the urge to shelter Jim and had to consciously forego it.

‘After I departed Kerrius’ offices it did not take long to find the technological sector: it was more orderly than the areas we travelled earlier. It was, however, challenging to find a store-owner who would speak about the Romulan-Klingon device. They appeared wary of my intentions and the object - it was presumptuous to assume its full function as proven by our eventual communication—the last person I spoke to owned a second-hand store at the edge of the district. What I learned was that the device was relatively new, it had likely been invented in the last four to five years, yet it was the fifth iteration. That suggested considerable funding. 

Starfleet would have gleaned any official cooperation between the Klingon and Romulan Empires, who would presumably have the funds and research prowess, so a limited number of outcomes and assailants remain. What is more likely, is an insurgency that is in allegiance between individuals and smaller groups of Klingons, Romulans, Orions and potentially Humans — unified under one ideology. It would not be a leap in logic to assume that they are anti-establishment, both against the Federation, and the Empires. In short:recognised systems of government. On that basis, it must feed on social or economic discontent, as such movements have tended to in the past.’

Jim blinked in realisation, ‘That’s what Nessa mentioned on Farius Prime, she spoke about picking a winning side.’

‘That is a simplified, but effective summary,’ Spock nodded, he picked up the thread again, reeling in memory and hypnotised by the roll of events, ‘By then you had given the order to beam up and the conflict began as I was travelling to the transport station—unmarked, armoured vehicles entered the streets. They were equipped with electromagnetic bullbars.  Factions began forming…and soon it was raining again, and the fighting continued to force me further in the attempt to find defensible shelter. During this time I had moved uphill—Rotundas’ drainage system opens in the north-west basin of the city—presumably an entrance for maintenance work, where I entered and others had too. 

The situation abated until nightfall. If memory serves, it was there that I was able to contact you. After that moment, the situation escalated again: water levels had risen, and predictably flooded downward. Everyone scattered and…and it is here that my memory begins to fail me - because of the cold. I know that I waited, and in that time I lost my phaser, and the centre-mechanism of the device somehow.  I’m uncertain how long it was before Doctor McCoy and Captain Nessa found me — there was a third man, but he was killed before we reached the shuttlecraft. We escaped through the city, and the fighting had quietened by then. From there on, I do not remember anything.’

As he listened, Jim’s eyes had focused on the ground, and it took him a long moment to pull out of his stupor; to look up and have eyes that were hollow with rage, jaw working through a long series of clenches.

He swallowed, ‘Spock…’ he said, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘You are not responsible.’

Jim shook his head and dodged his eyes. He stood up and paced the front of the room once, to the door and back. ‘I should have known better than to split us up.’

‘I made the same error.’

‘But your memories — are they that…faint? I know you can typically remember things to the decimal.’

‘I am partly summarising, however, they are somewhat distant.’

‘And that’s unusual?’

‘Yes. But I believe they will surface in their entirety once I recall what occurred later on.’

Jim sighed, his chest was a little caved, ‘Right.’

The computer chirped. Jim rounded the table and answered and it was as if a sheet was dropped over him; he changed. His shoulders tightened as if by a screw at the centre of his back and his eyes became distant somehow. Within himself, he dropped behind a veil of command. 

‘Kirk here.’

‘Captain, I’ve just received a second hailing signal from the VSS Volan,’ beta shift; Ensign Nguyen.

‘I will be on alpha - a few minutes, Ensign — let Captain Nessa know.’

‘I tried to, Sir, but she insisted. The ionisation has cluttered subspace.’

Jim glanced at Spock, then back, ‘Order the shuttle bay to begin preparations for craft entry.’

‘I’m not sure she’ll accept that.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘She has terms.’

‘Terms?’ 

‘Yes,’ he cleared his throat painfully, ‘I have tried to ask her, but she won’t tell me.’

‘Open a channel to her for me,’ Jim nodded, frowning.

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘Thank you, Ensign.’

‘This is unprecedented,’ Spock said softly. 

Kirk met his eyes over the screen again and there was a drift of time as the connection went through. From where he was seated, Spock could not see the screen, but her voice was tight and steeled when it came.

‘Kirk.’

‘Captain Nessa.’

‘We need to meet urgently.’

‘We’re preparing the shuttle bay now, you may—‘

‘—no. I prefer to meet you aboard the Volan.’

‘I don’t see any reason why the Enterprise won’t do the job. Besides, the Volan can’t accommodate our shuttlecrafts.’

‘I will send a transport for you. Call it a suspicion, or whatever you like, but I will not board the Enterprise.’

‘We mean you no harm, I hoped we’d proven that by now,’ Kirk said lightly, ‘I can assure you you’ll be safe, and free to leave whenever you choose to.’

‘Whatever you’ve proven, we’ve done it twice over. I lost a man in that rescue operation,’ she said sharply. ‘If it weren’t for us, your Vulcan would be floating face-down in a sewer somewhere.’

Kirk stared at the screen, cut in perfect passivity, ‘I’m sorry about your crewman,’ he said tightly.

‘So?’

‘Can you send a shuttlecraft for us to come to you?’

‘Us?’

‘Doctor McCoy, Mr Spock, security Lieutenant Giotto and myself.’

‘No.’

‘Let me guess,’ Kirk exhaled, ‘You won’t accommodate Lieutenant Giotto.’

‘And not Spock,’ her voice soured on his name. Spock looked down at the table, there was a branch of shame beginning to bloom in him. He had rarely experienced himself as such a burden as he did now.

‘And if I were to ask McCoy, instead of giving him the order to accompany me, is he likely to say yes, in your opinion?’

‘The Doctor will agree,’ she said, ‘I have no doubt.’

Kirk took a moment, rubbed his chin in thought.

‘Immediately, Kirk. Yes?’

He nodded imperceptibly at her, ‘If Doctor McCoy agrees…stand by for now,’ the comm chattered with call waiting, ‘Kirk out.’

He switched channels and McCoy’s voice punched out, ‘Jim!’

‘What’s going on, I just spoke to Captain Nessa—’

‘—did she tell you?’

‘Tell me what?’

‘Oh no—’

‘Bones.’

‘This isn’t...’ he paused for a long moment, ‘Look, Jim, I never thought I would come to this, but I am out of words. We have to meet her aboard the Volan,’ his voice had an uncharacteristic edge. 

‘This makes a convincing argument for _not_ going, Doctor. I need a better explanation.’

‘Jim, I will swear by anything you like — I swear on Spock’s life,’ he said, ‘you have to understand…to…well, hell I can barely wrap my own head around it, I’m half-convinced I dreamed the whole thing. But no amount of explanation is going to make sense unless you see—’

He stop-chucked halfway. 

‘See what?’ Kirk tipped closer to the screen. His face was drawn as if he could will McCoy to spit out the words. 

‘Like I said, I can’t describe it,’ he grew by measures exhausted. ‘I simply cannot.’

‘Is it a possible source of contamination?’

‘No, no - nothing like that,’ he said, ‘Dammit, I’m not playing twenty-one questions - the sooner we get on the Volan the sooner we can deal with this.’

‘For the record, I don’t like this one bit.’

‘I didn’t expect you would. But I think it’s only right you deal with this personally.’

And Kirk’s eyes finally skimmed over Spock, then back. 

‘Alright, Bones,’ he said finally.

‘Alright,’ he echoed solemnly. ‘By the way, have you seen Spock since he left sickbay?’

‘I have.’

‘How did he seem?’ 

Kirk blinked several times, he cleared his throat, ‘Well, you can call him in and ask him yourself.’

‘Oh, I certainly will,’ he said, ‘But, you know him better than anyone. You would know if he wasn’t himself.’

Spock ducked his head, staring at his hands in his lap, he could not fathom why - even without a word - how all this seemed like a betrayal on both their behalves.

‘He seemed fine,’ Kirk said, ‘Just…tired.’

‘Being half-frozen to death tends to do that to a man,’ McCoy answered. 

‘I’ll see you in the shuttle bay ready-room at 0700,’ Kirk said briskly. ‘Kirk out.’

The hollow silence sat between them, multiplying like malignant cells until Kirk stood and rounded the table. He leaned on the edge beside where Spock was seated and offered him his hand. 

‘You ready?’

‘Yes,’ Spock took it after a moment and pulled himself up. Kirk held him in a one-armed hug. 

Spock lowered his head to his shoulder briefly and shut his eyes and smelled him and felt his heart.  In spite of himself, he was reminded of goodbyes and grievances. Of the fourth’s head in the sand and the vestiges of belongings. Jim kissed him chastely and let go.

* * *

It was shy of the hour when the Orion shuttlecraft landed in the Enterprise bay. 

Spock entered the ready-room alongside Kirk. McCoy was already peering through the porthole window. He turned at the sound of the door sliding shut, and his eyes lingered on Spock, up and down, as if to evaluate him medically.

‘Are you ready?’ Kirk said.

‘As I’ll ever be,’ McCoy muttered.

‘If it were anyone else, Bones…’ Kirk exhaled, shaking his head as he moved to the armoury cubbies. 

‘Trust me, I know how bent this all seems.’

‘Congratulations are in order, Doctor. It appears that your self-awareness remains unphased by our recent difficulties.’

‘Spock,’ he said plainly, ‘I saved your damn life not seventy-two hours ago. But I guess it _appears_ you’ve recovered relatively well.’

‘I intended to compliment you,’ he locked his hands behind his back and inclined his head. ‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome,’ McCoy said, and his eyes lasted a long time on Spock’s face in intent, nearly glazed scrutiny. ‘But the least you could have done was stay put in sickbay — how’s that head of your’s?’

‘I believed I was adequately healed when I regained consciousness.’

‘And with what medical training did you reach that conclusion, Spock?’

‘We don’t have a lot of time,’ Kirk interrupted, ‘Starfleet has been asking for a complete report of Farius Prime since we left — and the competency review panel is tomorrow. We’ll have to be out of the Nebula by then.’

‘Competency review?’ McCoy stop-started toward Kirk. 

The Captain exhaled, he glanced through the port window. 

‘ _Shuttlebay repressurising, stand by_.’

‘Jim?’ 

‘Later, later,’ he said.

The light above the door blinked green, it parted with an arduous hiss, and an Orion man stepped out of the unfolding craft door beyond. 

And it was the shape of the shuttle that cut out of space in Spock's eyes. 

It became a black hole into which all context drained, dragging him along and back. He was hurled in a tunnel of white, and that same shuttle was shining wet by the rain, and crude darkness, and against his mind there was a great pressure building as if a balloon were inserted at the base of his skull and blown up against the rest of his brain forcing it to come near-undone and milk from his ears in streams of grey matter to be replaced with the lightness that air created an undefinable void. In that sliver of time, he did not know his own name and his place and he had no age and no mother no father nor planet or native tongue and had never known the affection of a friend or the loyalty of a crewmate. This balloon-mind, this intense emptiness was not in actual fact nothingness — it was a bursting absence of all things necessary to a soul — the soul that was in place of his and screaming out for someone, for anyone to reach out — and it was the frame of reference, that vague inkling that he had been someone at some point which allowed him to refit this emptiness as loneliness and to have it sit in his chest tightly wound as a trap, waiting to snare something or anything which could understand this condition. Someone, anyone.  He understood and he was hurt and suddenly the membrane burst and he slid back into himself, into the streams of his present gravity where his knees were clacking and loose beneath him. 

Spock caught himself on the edge of the nearest shoulder, McCoy’s, and air pierced him. 

‘Spock?’ Kirk was at his side, grabbing his shoulders and reinforcing him. Spock let go of McCoy.

‘Bones what’s happening?’ Kirk muttered. He was very pale, white stigma in yellow petals. 

‘Whatever happened on the planet is happening to him again,’ McCoy’s voice was scabbed raw, ‘We have to go Jim.’

‘We can’t leave—’

‘It’s the only way to help. I wouldn’t know what else to do. You have to trust me.’

Spock held up a hand, he swayed again, he did not understand what was happening, but now he had a reminder of that absolute loneliness and namelessness and it was shredding at the ends of his mind and threatening to tear him clean in two. 

‘Can you walk?’ Kirk asked him softly. Spock stepped back in answer and straightened up, he tugged at the hem of his uniform.

‘I believe it was a temporary lapse.’

‘I’ll give the conn to Scotty—’

‘No, no, I…I was prompted by the shuttlecraft,’ he looked behind them, eyes turning faraway. Spock averted his eyes when his sight began warping into the past again, spinning.

‘Probably the last thing you remember on that planet,’ McCoy followed his eye line with a squint, then back, ‘You don’t remember waking up on the Volan?’

Spock shook his head.

‘Bones?’ Kirk turned to McCoy again, his brow was knotted.

‘We’re not going to figure anything out by standing around here — Spock should come with us.’

‘Captain Nessa expressly requested that I do not board the ship.’

‘There’s no time to try and convince her otherwise, and the shuttle seems to make things worse,’ McCoy exhaled, ‘Jim we have to leave. Now.’

Kirk looked between them and focused on Spock at last. 

‘Spock?’ he asked, and a wave of his fear and indecision rolled through Spock’s weakened shields.

‘If I become incapacitated I will turn command over to Mr Scott — I trust Doctor McCoy knows best,’ he mustered, and nodded, ‘Go, Jim.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Translations/Terms**  
>  _Kup-il-lamekh yelong fai-tor tri-falek._ \- To be unwarmed by the sun and therefore aware of inner heat.  
>  _Lirpa_ and _Ahn-woon_ \- Traditional Vulcan melee weapons, notably used in the _pon farr_ combat of _kal-if-fee_  
>  _The Four Pillars of Existence_ \- Something I absolutely made up 🖖


	14. Nascence

And if he could not trust his own two arms to keep him safe, then what? He had come back from the cold and impossibility that was the lightyears between them, and had said his name, had said it without any reservation as if to seek shelter—and when Spock slept he had not moved an inch, and he had laid with him and kept him warm and still, in all that time, they had been travelling to some dark conclusion _—then then then_ the shuttlecraft vibrated and trembled under him and the Enterprise became smaller in the window, Kirk fought the urge to turn to McCoy and grab his shoulder and shake him and ask these fundamental questions to which there could be no true answers. 

What he did instead was clasp his hands and look down at his boots. There was a waking nightmare of another fit; Spock's eyes rolling back into his skull and going loose and this time there would be no one to catch him, his body would hit the ground with a terrible sound. 

McCoy drummed his class-ring into the metal armrest, and Kirk looked out the window again. In the stripping and shredding barriers of gas, imbued god-lights of this wherever else, he was reminded of a time gone by, each minute as distant as the last tap of the ring, and becoming hazy as it went on like the Enterprise being obscured now. Kirk grabbed McCoy's wrist in one swipe.

He splayed his hand in surrender. 'Sorry. Force of habit.'

Kirk let go and swallowed and looked out the window again. The streams of gas and matter travelled like milk through tea. He felt ill.

'Jim—'

'I don't want to hear it unless it's some kind of explanation.'

'It's not…I don't exactly understand what's going on yet.'

'Then that's that.'

'Really?' McCoy didn't back down, Kirk looked at him and found that familiar, elevated flame in his blue eyes, 'I think you're shooting the messenger.'

'A messenger may actually have information.'

'Alright, listen,' McCoy clutched his elbow, 'I understand you're frustrated, but don't conflate this, Jim. I don't have enough fingers to count all the times Spock's been in trouble, and you're usually better at keeping it together.'

'Doctor, I believe you're overstepping,' he pulled his arm away firmly, glaring at him. 

'I might as well do it in this shuttle because there ain't enough space for you to kick my ass,' McCoy snapped, 'It has been four damn years of logic-this and logic-that and I've had enough of this pantomime you two play just to avoid a simple answer.'

Kirk opened and shut his mouth on choice insults that flew into his head. Then all at once, the fight left him. There was a long silence, the nominal twittering of instruments from the cockpit, and the pilot smoothly coasting through, console prattling. He turned away and looked out the window and was blinded to the stars and rolled back into bed and deafened by the way Spock had muttered his name and clasped him like a lifeline. 

'Oh, Jim…' McCoy's voice fell apart.

'Rotten timing,' Kirk said softly, 'I've always been excellent in that regard.'

McCoy was silent for a long time, 'Spock is not Edith Keeler.'

'No,' he scraped the words from his depths, 'No, he isn't. I'd sooner let Earth collapse in on itself.'

It shocked them into an indeterminable nothing, into the streaming blackness outside and the frozen vacuum. Kirk had not wanted to say it, but he did not regret it, and it was not an exaggeration and it was the sincerity that was a frightening prospect; what he had become capable of in a single night. And for all the violence he could feel brewing in his breadbasket, it was nothing to the abject defeat that encompassed every other limb. For so long he had imagined that if he could embrace Spock, if he could take his hand easily and know the taste of his lips and feel his heart beating against his own, then they would surely become indestructible. Then, nothing could tear him away. That, if they crossed that final hurdle and pitched head-first into one another, it would be forever. Forever, selfishly, was what he wanted with him. And worse yet, at the door of reality, he knew that the Vulcan lifespan was twice that of a Human and had been ecstatic that he would, therefore, go first: he would never live to see Spock die. But then his face had become sheet-white and he recalled: Spock swayed left, then right in the shuttle bay ready-room and Kirk saw what was essentially his consciousness vacate his eyes, and be replaced with something else…something with no name, a being that was afraid beyond any possible comfort. 

'It's going to be alright,' McCoy muttered.

'Really?'

'I don't really know that,' he muttered, 'It's just a thing that needs saying sometimes.'

'Provincial wisdom prevailing thousands of lightyears from Earth - don't bother praying, Doctor, God can't hear us out here.'

Kirk winced at his own words, his mouth seemed to be on the run from the rest of his head. If Sam were beside him instead of McCoy, he'd say— _go ahead and think it all you want, it's not true, Jimmy —_ and it was the overdramatic nature that Sam would object to, not some faithful whim. And he loved and hated his brother for calling him Jimmy. 

McCoy started up again, tapping his class-ring against the armrest, unconsciously and as an over spillage of his nerves. It set off Kirk's teeth at a sour edge; he'd never known the him to keep his anxieties bottled up. He tottered on the rhythm into memory, as if a part of his mind was attempting to pacify him.

The last time he had spoken to Sam was almost three years ago, the Enterprise was passing through Deneva's sector and temporarily came into range. Having being foretold, Sam had seized the opportunity and put in a call to him. And here, the memory passed through fog. They must have made small-talk at first and exchanged details of their days, routine, routine. Then, imperceptibly, he was talking about Spock, who at that time had just published a paper on quasar wavelengths and emissions, without missing a single minute of his other duties. And out of nowhere, Sam had said something that he'd never forget:

'I don't understand how you fell for a Vulcan, Jimmy. That is, unless, he's fallen for you too.' 

'Hang on, I didn't say that. Besides, you haven't met him.'

'I guess that's not really the point.'

'What do you mean? If that was the case - that I had feelings, more than friendship toward him — which I do not — it would be pertinent for you to know who really he is. It's a two-way street.'

'Of course, I know. So then, what is it about him?'

'Well, I haven't.'

'Haven't what?'

'Fallen for him.'

'Right.'

'Meaning, it's not the point.' 

'You're the one who's been going on and on about this Mr Spock, Jimmy. I didn't make a peep. And would it be such a leap of logic? You fall in love every time there's a full moon. At least that's what Gary used to say.'

'You're exaggerating, and Gary would always engineer those elaborate scenarios to pair me up; what is it Dad tells us? "Don't spit in my eye and tell me it's raining, kid". Meanwhile, out of the two of us, you're the romantic one - you married Aurelian straight out of college.'

'I certainly did, and she says hello by the way. But you missed the distinction, I didn't say you were any good at _staying_ in love. Just that, you're exceptional at falling into it.'

'Ha-ha, thank you for that. Say hello to her for me too, and thank her for the birthday gift. Couldn't have been you, since you have the memory of gnat.'

'Hey, she coordinated, but we picked it out together.' 

'It's a shame I won't be able to play the record, nothing on the ship will play something so ancient. Not so subtle message by the way? _Born Under a Bad Sign_?'

'I just figured you wanted your own copy, nothing to it. But, I am serious about that other thing, Jimmy. I worry about you.'

'Why? I would say things have turned out alright.'

'For two years in, they're swell, but then what?'

'Then…eventually, another five years, or another ship or some expedition - the Fleet is not likely to run out of exploratory assignments any time soon.'

'No, but you might just get tired of it. Won't you want to go home sometime?'

'Earth?'

'No, I don't mean Earth. Don't act like a dummy, it doesn't suit you.'

'Sam, you can't expect me to solve this problem in one night.'

'What about Carol Marcus?'

'What about her?'

'Don't you think, if after the mission you go back and try to make amends—'

'I'm not going to grovel for scraps of her life if I ever get bored with mine. She made her decision.'

'You have a kid with her.'

'And he'll be better off without me being a half-way father to him.'

'I didn't want to upset you…'

'You haven't, this is just how things are. At least for now, it's sailor's luck for me all the way.'

'But after the five-year mission is over, say, you dock at Earth and you get into the transporter room and then what?'

'You're very cagey, who do you mean?'

'I mean…you'll eventually have to say goodbye to Spock, right — so, how will it play out? Do you shake hands and then go your own way and become footnotes in each other's service papers? Or will he take some assignment and you'll take a different one, and maybe meet up once in a while when your paths cross for those awkward drinks old colleagues are always going out for, or small-talk at conferences and reunions. Do you catch my drift?'

'We may get reassigned together.'

'You ever hear of Starfleet keeping a team as successful as your's together?'

'I don't know.'

'Think about it?'

'What do you want me to say, Sam? Huh? Yes, we'll probably end up becoming strangers to each other, is that the conclusion you want to force out of me?'

'No. I just want you to face things for what they are. You've got to make some decisions too, or life will make them for you. Or worse, Starfleet will.'

'How magnanimous, thank you. Really.'

'You're being defensive.'

'He is my friend.'

'I can't pry your eyes open, I guess… I'm just happy you got someone in your corner. He sounds wonderful.'

'Right. Thank you.'

'Okay. Well, you've probably got a lot on your plate. I'll let you go.' 

'Sam…'

'Yeah?'

'Somehow…somehow, it would be worse than becoming distant, if it didn't work out between him and I. Do you understand what I mean?'

'Yes. But you've got to take a chance on something, sometime, Jimmy.'

'Sure. And did you mean that before—the part about me falling out of love easily?'

'You make it sound like I said you were cursed, it was just…well, it was statistical, I guess.'

'Alright. I see, thanks for that gift again, and say hi to Peter for me.'

'Will do, he'll be thrilled, he's always reading about you in the press.'

'Good things, I hope.'

'Oh, they make you out to be a bit of a rogue.' 

'I certainly try.'

'Bye, Jimmy. I love you. Take care out there.'

'Will do. Love you too — goodbye. Bye.'

He waved to him through the screen. His hair had been greyer at the temples, receding and his eyes were cloudy with melancholy. And then three months later, he was dead. 

* * *

The Orion vessel dawned into view. It resembled a sledgehammer with a rotating, circular cuff at the stern, and a longer segment going down to the port and starboard. Its cosmetics had been chipped by time and there were rough chrome panels under her belly where a shuttle-bay yawned open, spangled in odds and ends and renovations that must have come and gone over the years under Nessa, who, unbound by any uniform could do as she pleased. Under the ragbag of coloured grey and white and flint sheets, there was a seed of brutal strength in the vessel, threatening to explode to fruition at any moment. Not for the first time, Kirk wondered if he was willingly putting his head on the block. Shutting his eyes, waiting for the hack. 

The pilot clicked open the subspace when it whistled. 

Receiving: 'Enterprise to Volan shuttle craft two, come in. Come in. Scott here.'

Kirk went into the cockpit. The Orion man looked back up at him, face expressionless and sallow. He was an adverse sort of thin, with a goatee that dragged his features to a hostile point. 

'Go on,' he said, and he had these brilliant teeth that seemed just about ready to fall out of his mouth like rhinestones. 

'Kirk here, what is it?'

'Captain,' there was a crackling end, 'Mr Spock has turned the conn over to me.'

'Why?'

'I donnea, Sir, by the time I came up he had already left,' he said. 

Uhura's voice came through next, 'Captain.'

'Uhura what is it? What happened?'

'Before he left the bridge, Mr Spock was looking through the data that has been collected about the nebula—'

'Yes, yes?'

'He mentioned something about the disrupted progress of the nebula's formation,' she said, 'And then-well, then, he started to speak Vulcan and I couldn't catch everything but — he said something about ah, _masu-tukh—_ hydrogen particles being diluted or no— _ask' ric…_ disrupted by the exhaust. Hydrogen and base elements being polluted by fuel exhaust.'

'Exhaust?' Kirk muttered, he glanced over his shoulder at McCoy; prey-wide eyes and pinched mouth. He turned back, 'Exhaust from ships? Is that what he meant?'

'It's likely.'

'—Captain,' Scott's voice blew out the speaker, 'I've just pulled up the data. That's exactly what he was gettin' at.'

'Which trace elements?' 

'Too many, too many composite ones that are nae too complex for a wee nebula,' Scott answered, 'They all seem concentrated within a half-cubic parsec, Sir, some kind of course highway, almost. They've been leaking through, cutting up the flow of hydrogen and disrupting the natural progress of the nebula.'

'So it's a navigation route, and non-clean energy is used by a majority of the vessels?'

'Yes,' he said, 'if it's right and true then the ionisation would be worn-off in that sector because of it.'

'Why didn't we get this until now?'

'I-I don't know, Sir,' he said, grimly, 'Might be that Mr Spock hadn't been working this past week until today, just the sort of detail he would notice.'

McCoy had stepped up beside him, crammed into the small cockpit. The pilot continued to operate the shuttle, he didn't appear concerned by the exchange. Kirk noticed his knuckles were tattooed with white ink.

'Where's Spock now?'

'We don't know, Sir,' he said, 'Not in his quarters or the labs. I've got a security team looking for him - he seemed shaken up.'

'Keep me updated, we're on approach to the Volan right now. Rerun the scans, and find Spock,' outside the front visor they were less than thirty feet from the entry and flashing green lights highlighted their route into the Volan's gut. 

'Yes, Sir. Scott out.'

There was minor turbulence as they entered and the shuttlecraft dropped landing pincers over a red cross. The entry slid shut on the nebula, the stars and a distant Enterprise. Yellow light flooded through and made uncommon suns of the windows. Kirk squinted and they were jolted as the craft settled. A voice announced something on the intercom outside. 

He began to ask McCoy something, but—‘out, now,' the pilot said, getting up from his seat and yanking on a pully which dropped the door open. There was hiss of cold air by Kirk and he turned and barrelled down the stairs, claustrophobic beyond reason. Nessa was standing several feet from the exit with her arms crossed. Her hair was dropped in masses of dark whorls by her shoulders, cheeks high and cream-mint as if she had been put to her ends. 

Kirk wanted to pull his phaser and interrogate her at its end, to see her eyes shining with the same confusion and consequence he was already feeling. He took a long breath and overstepped it, but found, after all, that he had no breath for hellos. 

'We just got word of a cargo route a half-parsec away,' Kirk said.

McCoy arrived at his side, spindly arms tensed into angles. The pilot moved past them both and stopped beside Nessa for a moment. She spoke to him in low Orion, and there was a flash of her outside of the Captaincy. She patted his shoulder, lingering, dragging her fingers down to his elbow and was awarded with a glimmer of his jewelled mouth. He left the shuttle bay, and Nessa returned her attention to them.

'Welcome aboard.'

'It is,' Kirk tried again, 'an understatement to say I have a lot of questions.'

'You don't have much manners, do you?'

McCoy cut through, 'Spock isn't well, I need to—'

'—you are a poor guest too, Doctor,' her upper lip half-snarled. 'So what? What's the matter with him?'

'Whatever happened to him on Farius Prime is happening again,' McCoy was vibrating with a new wave of fury or maybe it was anxiety or both, Kirk could no longer tell. 

'That thing is not as harmless as you thought, is it Doctor? Why aren't I surprised,' she said, 'it was designed to be a weapon, can you blame it for being effective?'

' _Thing_?' he hissed, falling forward one step with his incredulity, 'If it was left up to you—'

'Then the Vulcan would already be dead,' she said coldly, 'Save it, Doctor, I need your Captain to know that the onus of Spock's life is now entirely on you.'

'Me,' McCoy shouted, 'Yes, it's on me.'

Her nostrils flared and her mouth spasmed grotesquely, teeth snapping clean the hesitation, she turned her burning eyes on Kirk, 'You heard him say it, Kirk? And I saved Spock on Farius Prime and lost a man doing it. You cannot overturn the asylum you offered us if he dies now, I need your word before I explain everything.'

McCoy slapped a flat palm to his chest, 'I did it. If Spock dies now then it's on me, Jim.'

Kirk's insides had started to dribble uncontrollably with his heart, 'I heard him.'

Nessa stepped forward and reached out her hand, and Kirk took that slim, hot palm and shook it twice and at last, she seemed satisfied to believe him.

She waved them onto her trail and began out. As they walked she spoke in one tone, flowing over words like pausing would mean that she could never start again and be entombed and suffocated with the knowledge, and all the while on the backhand of her words Kirk heard the constant dropping tone of _now if he dies_ and _then then then_ and he felt his own body to be suddenly pathetic and his legs were numb and her voice was burrowing into him like a parasite and he could not understand how, the more she spoke, the less he seemed to understand Spock's condition.

'An insurgency started fifty years ago — maybe ten of your Earth years. At that time, I had just bought the Volan with my partner. I was in a group that believed the Federation's reach had overspent its grasp — and what you must understand now, is that there were many conspiracies regarding their intentions. For the most part, we detested that the Federation, and by extension Starfleet's, sense of moral superiority and the imposition of Human ideals on non-Humans. 

You can think whatever you want about this, because you are that very thing, but that point is now moot. Eventually, the insurgency became so large that it collapsed in on itself and out of these parts—perhaps in half that time—violence became the order, but before that, my crew and I depended on the cargo routes that were established by the insurgency for a long time.' 

'What kinds of cargo?'

'Mostly technologies for independent planets that were good customers, and did not want to rely on the Federation,' she said, 'Sometimes medicine, sometimes consumer goods. Anything, everything. Our trade believes—believed—in one constant, if the box is not addressed to you, then it contains nothing.'

She speared them into the labyrinth of the Volan, taking turns to dizzying effect. The bulkheads were scrappy like the exterior and doors were marked by symbols Kirk could not understand, and as they moved power-saver lights pinged on before them and off behind them so there was the feeling of being eaten alive by the ship. His eyes started to ache like someone was tapping their yolk from the inside.

Nessa stopped at the end of a narrow corridor and turned to a plain door. There was a red-lit security panel to the side. She reached out and placed her fingers on the panel and turned to Kirk. 

'But we are now at a point where the cargo has largely become weapons being produced by the insurgency — they are no longer looking for independence, but a total disconnection from the Federation through any means necessary, even war. There are barely any merchant ships that aren't in constant movement, but…but as it's gone on, and we cannot say the boxes are empty, you see? There are great quantities of artillery, biochemical items, spyware devices; whoever is behind this has hit deep pockets.

I've lost friends, two-thirds of my crew have been forced away because there is no room for any conviction. You either carry the cargo, or it is used to erase you.

So. Kirk…' her voice softened, her eyes were pleading, 'You must understand that this isn't _my_ doing, I never intended to be a part of something like this. Even when I approached you on Farius Prime, I had not seen it with my own eyes yet…I did not truly know - believe - that it was possible.'

He leaned a hand against the scratched facade of the door and thought of Pandora's box. Whatever was inside had already been released, and the consequences were now his. Their's. 

'Open it.'

She blinked and swivelled her wrist, right, left, left, right and so on by measures with a low clicking until the door came up with a hiss and they were perched at the threshold. 

Inside, the light was the underwater blue of dawn. Earth's dawn, which had not found him in years, which, could not be replicated, except, by some miracle: now. The bulkheads glowed and the bare floor was singing with it, there was no furniture and no features but a port-hole into the nebula, rotating, birthing and burning. 

And under all that was a small and living form by the wall, and it took a long time for Kirk's eyes to adjust and see it clearly and at that moment it was as if his life became a long-winded joke with a pitiable punchline.

The eyes that looked up at him were his brother' s—the eyes with which Sam had looked at him as a boy, wide and unassuming. He was peering up at him all the way from the narrow window of their childhood, offering his hand to walk him home on the first day of school and standing by the waving cornstalks. The sky had been an endless scoop of blue, and the ground gold. _Come on, Jimmy—come on, come on! The USS Virgil is launching —_ he had checked his maraschino cherry-red wristwatch he'd gotten for Christmas— _in sixteen minutes._ And then Sam took his bag from him and doubled it onto his back and grabbed his hand, pulling him through the shortcut. _GO GO GO_ —they chanted in their high voices until they saw the porch and the white door and Sam dropped both their bags by the mailbox post and let go and sprinted ahead, feet kicking out and slipping on the stairs and getting up with a howling laugh, clapping dirt from his hands.

It all went through him in a matter of seconds, carried on a charge of misfiring synapses. Kirk blinked, a boy continued to stare at him. After a protracted moment, those eyes ceased to be his brother's, but they didn't become unknown to him either. 

'Bones?' he muttered, then again. 

The Doctor was already beside him, hand on his shoulder. 

'Is he…real?' 

The boy tracked the smattering of their words with trembling glances. There were lines down his cheeks, tracks cleaned by steady streams of tears that were dry now. Kirk could see at bottom of his expression not fear, but something far worse; surrender. His cedar brown hair parted in an errant cowlick, and he was dressed in blotched white. He had his knees clutched in his small hands, grimy fingernails digging into the fabric, arrested.

'I ran the tricorder data - DNA and RNA - against you, and got back fifty-percent,' he said lowly, 'And I ran the data against Spock too, and that was the remainder of his DNA.'

And it was obvious in the boy's bluntly pointed ears and then Kirk had an impression that he was also looking into some lost childhood which Spock rarely spoke about. Children imagine misery will never end if they haven't known anything else, and eventually take comfort in the steady nature of pain — _after a time, it was easy to delineate between insults and to know their source. In my experience, they are rarely born in the aggressor himself._

Kirk stood up and turned away.  This was a violation he could not understand. It left a taste at the back of his throat which had no comparison. Not quite blood and not quite chalk, and it was suffocating him. McCoy followed him out. 

'Jim,' he said quietly, stopping beside him outside. Nessa was leaning into the corridor wall, sucking her teeth and staring hypnotically at the ground. 

'A weapon…' he whispered to himself. 

'And he isn't the only one. There are dozens,' Nessa said without looking up. 

'Of him?'

'No,' McCoy shook his head, glancing back through the darkened doorway, 'They wouldn't have enough genetic material.'

'Starfleet has the bio-samples,' he said hollowly, 'two sets.'

'I checked the Enterprise's banks when I came back, they're accounted for.'

'So HQ…someone on the inside. Some kind of breach?'

'He is a weapon because they have written it into his bones,' Nessa interrupted, she had frozen into some prophetic statue. 'They're creating a new generation of an army — and they are using Starfleet's best assets, Kirk — have you killed before? Could you do it again? The answer must be yes, otherwise he would not exist.'

'He's just a boy.'

'And he will do what he was programmed to.'

'He isn't a machine,' McCoy snapped. 

' No?' her dark eyes, their centres, flicked up into his, 'Can you say you've never thought that about a Vulcan, Doctor? Not even once?'

Down the hall, a comm chirped and she turned and went. They watched her as she answered in low Orion. 

'Did you see the other children?'

'No,' McCoy shook his head, 'Spock seemed to just know he was there and went to him…he didn't seem to be in control of it.'

'Then why were we matched? Why _us_?'

'Well, one working theory is efficiency,' McCoy murmured, 'It's cut and dry to put together the best teams the Fleet has. Quite literally, in this case.'

'So it's a case of advanced eugenics,' Kirk said, he pressed a hand to his eyes, he expected to wake up from this at any second. 'I can't imagine any Romulans or Klingons having that kind of technology.'

McCoy nodded, frowning intensely, 'Eugenics is a problem that's been specific to Earth so far.'

'But why?' Kirk leaned into the fall, half boneless, 'Why is he _just_ a boy? If you're making an army why go through the trouble of raising children—all that time…'

McCoy crossed his arms tightly, his class-ring caught the light. Kirk thought of the tapping, he thought of leaving the Enterprise; sitting by Spock in the sickbay; Farius Prime; Whitman; the debris storm. Back, back, back and bitterly thought _I could have gone my whole life without knowing about this._ And immediately knew that that was naive. It would have come out somehow. Eventually. 

'Maybe they were short of the solution, it's not easy incubating a person…but there is a saying back home too,' McCoy said, 'Somebody's gotta raise rabid dogs if there's gonna be lambs come spring.'

Kirk looked into the darkened room, thought of the teeth in that small skull, milk teeth, and the tooth-fairy and Sandman and all the other collection of innocences that made up a childhood. Or had at least, had made up his for a time. 

'How old is he?'

'About six, but none of his cells predate the past year, so he's only been alive that long.'

'He wasn't born?'

'No. Grown, cells interlinked in a lab — hell, I wouldn't know what to call the process. I've never heard of it done successfully…mainly, because it's not permitted in—'

There was a rolling instance of Orion that pelted from up the corridor. Nessa smacked the wall panel and it flew like shrapnel into their talk, and they turned to her to see her neck in tatters of frustration or fear or both with veins. She glanced at them, darkly. She cut the line and rolled back on a new wave of heat. 

'Romulans,' she groused, turning into the room. 

Kirk went after her, McCoy on his heels. In one lunge she had the boy cornered like a lab rat. She reached out and wrangled him by the scruff of his shirt, and he yipped wordlessly. He kicked out with his arms and legs against her until she adjusted her grip to the back of his neck and across his stomach. His little finch chest rose and fell in a staccato of panic. The whites of his eyes brimmed and swivelled a blue-white in the dim, and his nostrils flared with pulses of air. For that moment he ceased to be some lab-grown specimen of antithetical sciences and was just a boy, just afraid and terribly small and breakable by all the world.

'Hang on a damn minute!' McCoy shouted.

'NO,' she yelled,' No more. Asking you for help was a mistake, Starfleet — Starfleet is worthless, _you_ have been worthless, Kirk.'

He remained stock-still, and spoke tightly, 'Where are the Romulans?' 

'Here. And they're here for this,' she shook the boy some and he pawed at her forearm. 

'Even if you surrender him they won't take you back now. There's a choice to make. Do you understand?'

'Are you protecting us now?' she gasped, 'I have twelve crewmen. Can you tell me, without blinking, that they will all be safe?'

Kirk swallowed drily, he could still remember the last twelve crewmen he'd lost himself. He knew their names, first and last, had written to their families his deepest sympathies and had answered, for the sake of closure, all their questions personally — he suddenly understood what Spock had been trying to tell him. _To welcome random chance as virulent fault is fatuous —_ the cards had been stacked against their favour for as long as they had lived, the incalculable events swirling around them never slept, never stopped compiling. _Virulent fault, virulent fault —_ the boy was a product of this chaos, personalised and yet utterly meaningless as any collection of cells that were made to multiply. It was something drilled into him at the academy, the last command lesson:

_You can rage against the odds all you like, but anyone could make that kind of Captain. In fact, a lot of you will, and you will do your jobs just fine, but it will eat you up and spit you out eventually if you don't accept Murphy's Law: anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. What is going to save you, simply, is losing. So far, there has been no exploratory mission without loss of life. It is statistically at one-hundred-percent that people will die under your watch. Good, efficient crew, maybe even people who have become your friends, and it won't always be for a good enough reason. And it will never be dignified._

An effigy of spoiled light came from the porthole. Shockwave coiled out from the hit, the floor lurched and they were thrown clean off their feet. Kirk reeled into the corner and his head connected with the skirts of the wall. It took several moments for the world to right itself. His scalp was warm with blood, and it spilt onto his lashes from his brow. He wiped it away, blinking honeyslow and fighting to claw back into his senses. The boy lay across from him on his front, some small and rag-dolled collection of limbs. McCoy struggled to his feet and went to him first, turning him over and looking into his face, checking his pulse. 

Kirk sat up slowly without taking his eyes away from the unreality. McCoy turned to him and froze, eyes travelling up.

And Kirk followed his gaze into the barrel-end of Nessa's phaser, 'This is my last chance,' she said.

'Romulans don't take prisoners.'

'Not me.'

'You're a traitor.'

'Not if I can say I killed James Kirk,' she said thoughtfully, then turned toward McCoy and the boy, 'Them too—'

He dove under her arm and diverted the shot as it went off, wrestling the phaser to himself, cradling it close, then fumbling to wield it. In that time Nessa stumbled back into the wall under the porthole and in sequence, all within a blink, there was another shout from the door in Orion. Kirk whipped toward the newcomer, the pilot from the shuttle was aiming another weapon at him. Nessa plunged onto Kirk's back, and his grip tightened around the phaser. A hot white blast squeezed off. The crewman was pierced, screaming, then dissipated from the inside out. Teeth and all. The ship staggered again and they were thrown together, tumbling. Kirk dropped the phaser.

When the world righted Nessa was perched on his chest. She vice-gripped her legs at his sides and tied her white palms around his neck, tightly, pinching his larynx shut with wire-threaded fingers. Over him, she bore her teeth and her hair curtained them. Big furious tears spilt out of her as if someone had kicked open a faucet and rained onto his cheeks. He could not move far enough to defend himself and she embraced him closer and pressed and pressed and he was drowning in her hair which had fallen across his face as she cradled him toward death. Darkness careened across his vision.

He began to sense the sweetness of the sleep on the other side of this pain, and like heat could feel like cold at extreme temperatures, death began to feel like a relief. It would be over soon. One last time, one more night, he thought, he would have liked to hold Spock in the quiet, to look into his face go from alertness to sleep.

Timing, timing, timing— _then then then_ it was all awfully rotten and the irony was clobbering him and choking him and Nessa's hands were nearly incidental. Weightlessness overcame him and a light seemed to be bursting from his essence, and for a moment death was as grandiose as the ancients had anticipated. 

Suddenly, the light bloomed to an elsewhere. He was flat on the Enterprise transporter pads, and Nessa wrenched up for a moment and still, her bared teeth were there, she did not allow the change to distract her, content to kill, coursing with it. He began to lose sight and sound, and her weight was an anvil on his gut, blowing out his air from two ends. 

A shadow passed over them, and as everything blacked out for a long instant he felt her hands rip away from his throat. Everything reeled back in, an open and sucking chamber of effect. He spluttered aggressively, body spasming under the waves of wracked air. 

'Jim!' McCoy was over him, tilting his chin up and telling him to breathe. Nessa thrashed in his periphery, as she was pulled further away by a pair of arms, blue belts of containment. 

His vision dotted white, Kirk coughed and coughed himself raw, and his head lolled uselessly until his chest slowly regulated. Focus bled in, McCoy's face, the sound of the door slipping open and, '—detain her in the brig.' — 'Yes, Sir.'

The door vacuumed shut. 

'You alright, Jim?' McCoy said, patting his shoulder, helping him sit up. Kirk looked aside to see Spock standing in front of the console, at the centre of the room. He was briefly hunched and his hands hung at his sides, grasping emptily. He was not looking at him but behind him. 

The boy lay unconscious on the furthest pads, and under the lights of the Enterprise Kirk stared at him and expected that he might fade as nightmares did, or that he would fall apart, or worse yet he thought maybe he was dead and that would be some kind of solution, that would be a possible end. But the thin skin of his neck tapped out with his pulse. He was alive. He was real. 

'The crew,' Kirk muttered. He coughed and turned to Spock, pushing up and going to the console. 'We have to find the Orion—'

'Scott to the transporter room.'

Spock went to the wall panel, 'Spock here.'

'Do you have the Captain and Doctor McCoy?'

'Yes, I managed to beam them aboard.'

'I disengaged the tractor beam once our instruments were de-ionised, Sir.'

The Enterprise rumbled, red alert flickered on, Kirk leaned forward on the console in defeat. He didn't need to hear it to know. 

'The USS Volan has been destroyed by the Romulans.'

He pushed himself away from the panels and staggered over to the wall, leaning on Spock's shoulder for support. 

'Scotty, get us out of here, quick as you can,' he rasped, 'Evasive manoeuvres.'

'Aye, Captain.'

Spock turned to him, close now. Kirk leaned his forehead against his arm and shut his eyes with his breath hitching up and down and still struggling to regain a taste for air. And he would be content to never do anything else. When he eventually pulled away his bleeding head had smudged impressions of crimson roses into Spock's blues. 

'I'm sorry,' he whispered, and then he was uncertain what he was apologising for, 'I'm sorry, Spock…Spock.'

Spock glanced down at the stain, unperceiving, lost, his dark eyes were full of multitudes. He reached up and flattened a palm against the back of Kirk's neck, his hand was dry and steady, and it restored some sense of reality. 

In their periphery the boy came to, stirring and rising with McCoy's hands hovering over him like a street magician. Surreality persisted. Spock's hand dropped and he was falling and falling and falling again and collapsing in streams of limbs onto Kirk and he embraced him tightly and pressed his cheek close and felt weak with his weight and hated and hated the boy. 


	15. Estimated Time of Arrival

Long days—days that weren’t days. Maybe if they had a sun and it was given the chance to rise things could have turned out differently. He had fallen asleep with Whitman beside him and woke with the hard-covered edge digging into the meat of his forearm. Some of the pages had been folded by a sleeping hand and the snapped and the whitesheet bones of words were an alarming first sight. Spock was already gone. There were lines swilling in his head— _I stop somewhere, waiting for you_ —and he couldn’t remember what came before. It sounded like a promise. He knew it was. The desk comm fluted, and he got up with a heavy head and tarred eyes. 

‘Yes?’

Channel in on audio, Uhura was on the other side: ‘Oh, Captain—sorry, I tried your quarters already, I thought I’d try to reach Mr Spock.'

He couldn’t fathom enough energy to explain why he was answering the comm in Spock quarters, nor did he really need to, ‘What is it?’

'We’re approaching Federation space, Sir.’

‘Reduce to space normal,’ he cleared his throat; kicking sleep out of his voice, ‘what will our ETA be?’

‘Approximately twenty-five minutes, Sir.’

‘Good, thank you—make sure everybody involved is prepared for the hearing, Lieutenant. Kirk out,’ he straightened up and stared at the empty hews of sheets through the divider, he touched his arm where the book had marked him— _I stop somewhere, waiting for you—_ there was an old and too familiar cotton-ball feeling caught in his throat. He could smell the wind rising from Tarsus IV’s burned soil, intermixed with singed whimpers of hair. He rubbed his eyes and reinforced himself…days that weren’t days…he wanted to rest.

**ETA — 51 HOURS, 18 MINUTES**

Kirk sat by the bed. Too tired to remain upright, he had leaned into the edge to rest his head if only for a little while. Just a little longer…from there he could see the bio reader and Spock’s stats trembling like branches in a breeze on a constrained axis, up, down, up. They lay still for so long the motion sensors killed the lights and they were submerged into a bluish dark; a bruised entrance to sleep. 

Spock breathed in deep long lunges that had no end. Kirk kept a hand resting on his chest but there was no way to gauge if he were inhaling or exhaling, up or down and his Vulcan heart was so far lodged into his other side that his heartbeat was miles away and there was only its distant thunder that came through his ribs and broke in his breastbone. At some point Kirk fell asleep, chasing the tail of this thought, in or out? Heartbeat, or the ship’s engine? 

He dreamed uncreatively: he was still at Spock’s side, still in sickbay. Nothing changed except for an old candelabra appearing at the bedside, lit and mouthing orange light. They began to levitate. Rising at a consistent speed and inconsistent angle. Kirk gathered Spock’s shirt material into a tight fist to keep them together. They were going up like balloons feeding tether. His back separated from the chair, and the sheets over Spock began to hang off his form, and soon they were drifting across the room. The candles came with them, passed them, and Kirk watched the firelights come closer to Spock’s face. His angular sideburns led to alpine cheeks, sweeping toward his mouth. Kirk could not estimate him to be from anywhere. Vulcan or Earth. He could be from everywhere all at once. The angle, which determined the back-bent arch of his brows was the same as the cursive turn of his ears, his hair was heavy with blackness. He was beautiful in a precise way. No end or beginning. And not incidentally either—there was an architectured virtue to his features. 

Spock’s mouth did not move but he said his name. Kirk loved his voice. He loved its tenor. He loved the way it bore his name— _Jim—_ his heart tripped out.

‘Jim.’

He woke with a start. Spock laid a hand over his. Jim swallowed against sandpaper and blinked his eyes open. The lights had come up to a low percentage, still blue. Spock stroked the back of his hand, the spaces between his knuckles. 

‘Hm?’ Jim did not move. Not yet. Just for a little longer, he preferred to be weightless. 

‘ _Fam-vel_ ,’ he whispered. ’Nothing.’

Jim brought his head up. He leaned his chin in his spare palm, ‘How are you?’

‘I am well.’

‘Good.’

‘Where is—’

‘With Bones,’ he couldn’t bear to let him finish the sentence. ‘We came up with a plan so no one would see him leave the transporter room.’

‘Were you successful?’

‘No, we ran into Nurse Chapel,’ he exhaled thickly, then rubbed his eyes, ‘But I’ve sealed off recreation room three. He’ll stay there for now—no else knows.’

Spock nodded faintly, his eyes drifted toward the ceiling.

‘Spock, what happened? McCoy said there isn’t much else the medicine can tell him.’

‘We were in the transporter room…’

‘You were unconscious all of a sudden. Like before.’

Spock swallowed, ‘While you were en route to the Volan, I…remembered. There was an instant when everything returned,’ his eyes clouded.

‘You remembered?’ he muttered.

Spock nodded, ‘We were passing through a hangar toward the shuttle-craft when I sensed something. I experienced a similar phenomenon when the Intrepid was destroyed. Do you remember it?’

‘Yes.’

‘This…this was different. Worse somehow. The mental link was not consciously made—similar to the Intrepid—but it was more immediate. Closer,’ he faltered again.

‘Was it painful?’

‘It was...’ he struggled to be accurate, he let go ofJim’s hand, ‘It was disconcerting. As if I were displaced, or given an auxiliary sense of self. An overpowering emptiness’

‘What about the physical side effects?’

‘Since I was mentally unprepared, I was overwhelmed,’ he said, ‘But without a clear frame of reference I cannot explain in more detail.’

His eyes were ink dark, there was a mournfulness in his face, ‘How long have I been unconscious?’

Jim rubbed his eyes and stood up, ‘Thirty hours and change. Water?’

He nodded, sitting up. Jim poured two cups at the ready-table and brought them over, he handed one over, Spock thanked him and sipped, asking, ‘What is our current heading?’

‘Federation space, we have to be in range for the competency hearing,’ he glanced at the chronometer, ‘we’ll make it, but only just. It took some time to shake off the Romulans, they made another appearance.’

Spock looked into the shallow end of his cup, blinking, ‘I apologise. I have been absent from my duties.’

‘It’s alright,’ Jim shook his head, he put his cup under the bed and stood by the edge, ‘May I?’ 

Spock shuffled over in answer, and he sat side-saddle beside him. Jim leaned toward him and kissed his cheek and even after the leaps and bounds, he seemed to become rigid and suddenly they were both inhibited. It was difficult to reach out and touch his cheek. But his eyes still fluttered shut, and he leaned into his hand as if he couldn’t help himself. Jim stroked a thumb over his cheekbone. He loved his face, he really did, and maybe it was over as quickly as it had begun. The idea frightened him somehow, more than he’d thought possible.

‘Spock?’ he murmured, throat tightening.

‘The child’s existence is a violation of our most inalienable rights,’ Spock answered softly, opening his eyes.

It was like ice water in his socks, or sediment in food crack to crack his teeth on.

‘Whatever happens now, whether I consent or not, he is neurologically linked to me,’ Spock glanced down, ‘However, this obligation does not extend to you. Nor should it.’

There was a long silence the Enterprise filled at warp six, she carried them on and on. Inevitably away from the time they had been safer, warmer, though even then it had been tenacious and it was all so clear now. 

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Your future should not be determined by this,’ Spock said, ‘Nor me…our personal involvement does not prerequisite interment to it.’

‘Personal involvement,’ he muttered, ‘I _am_ involved.’

‘Genetic connection is not binding,’ he said, ‘But a paternal Vulcan bond…if it is indeed that, would be.’

‘You are giving me a way out,’ he asked, ‘Is that your intention?’

‘I—’ and Spock faltered and had to collect himself, gather his breath, ‘Yes.’

‘And should I accept it?’ 

‘That is your choice.'

‘I’m asking for your advice,’ Jim’s voice came out hoarsely, and his eyes were hot and his chest ached.

‘ _Ashayam_ , I am not impartial.’

It stung. Jim slid off the bed and crossed the room, then crossed it again, pacing. He was adamant to avoid this conversation until all the chips were down.

‘We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it—until then, we’re required to report to the brass about him at the hearing, and they’ll decide what’s got to be done,’ Jim said.

Spock nodded somberly, ‘Section 34C: biological or eugenic weapons or subjects cannot be permitted to enter Federation space without strict consent — under the charge of treason for the commanding officer.’

‘I don’t think any code ever saw _this_ coming,’ he muttered and crossed his arms. He felt like their pressure was the only thing keeping his organs intact, inside. ‘It’s one of the few things every Federation planet agrees to before joining, blank check agreement.’

‘Often it is easier to agree to terms that mandate what is presumably impossible,’ Spock said. He met his eyes fully. 

And Jim had to wonder if he was still talking about the Federation. 

**ETA — 49 HOURS & 06 MINUTES**

McCoy met them in the corridor at a twilit beta hour. The corridors were empty except for the three of them. Before they went into the recreation room, the Doctor pulled them into the specimens lab no bigger than a half-office. It was mainly used for record-keeping of samples and they were stacked and secured on shelves going corner to corner of the room. 

‘Spock, you should stay back here if—’

‘I believe I have gained control, Doctor,’ he said, ‘I will not be affected this time.’

‘Well, if you’re sure,’ McCoy exhaled shortly and eyed him suspiciously, ‘because I sure as hell don’t understand it one bit.’

‘What have you found out, Bones?’ Kirk cut to the quick, the sooner they knew more, the better.

‘So far…nothing.’

‘What? How is that possible?’

‘Nothing out of the ordinary, I mean,’ he said, rubbing his chin, ‘the boy presents as a regular child, he is six years and four months old, he is within average height range, a little on the lighter side weight-wise. His blood components lean more toward Human than not, and so does the organisation of his organs. The only thing that’s abnormal is his neurological patterns, but even that can be explained by how much he’s been through. Simply put, he’s scared, and he doesn’t understand what’s happening.’

‘His emotional state would no doubt be additionally impacted by people within his vicinity,’ Spock nodded, ‘That would explain the patterns.’

McCoy frowned, ‘Are you telling me Vulcan children spend the entirety of their formative years being traumatised by picking up other people’s feelings?’

‘Not exactly. The aspects of Vulcan telepathy that are not touch-based are somewhat like an immune system — tolerance is built up over time, and governed by learning meditation, social cues and responsibilities — in short, a child will learn his or her place in the world and adjust to it. Until then, a parental link acts as a shield, protecting and guiding the child, until a time when it is no longer necessary.’

‘At what age?’

‘It varies,’ Spock answered.

‘So what happens to parentless children?’ Kirk asked.

‘Sooner or later they are overcome by their environment, or, alternatively, they are isolated from the general populace.’

‘How long did you say he’s been alive, Bones?’

‘Give or take a year,’ he said, ‘It’s difficult to tell without knowing exactly what sorts of equipment they used to—well, create him.’

‘Could a child survive that long?’ Kirk asked, glancing at Spock.

‘It is unheard of.’

‘I’d say by a simple process of elimination it’s not a leap to assume his Human side prolonged things,’ McCoy said grimly. ‘But what you’re saying is he automatically linked to you Spock, that he wouldn’t have meant to?’

‘Genetic predisposition, my DNA contribution, means that telepathic links were created naturally,’ Spock answered, ‘Proximity is a binding term since Vulcan telepathy is limited.’

‘Then, you were like a magnet, telepathically speaking,’ Kirk said lowly. 

‘That is an apt comparison.’

‘How sure are you about it being a parental link?’ McCoy asked.

‘It is the most likely outcome,’ he said, straightening up and lacing hands behind his back, ‘Obviously, I have never experienced this before — hence my initial reaction, however, there is nothing quite like it.’

'And it couldn't be intentional?’

‘No—it is unlikely,’ he said, ‘Furthermore, if he is a product of eugenics, then I would presume his DNA was sequenced in binary and submitted for arrangement through a computer, delineating the relevant traits, correct?’

‘More or less, yes.’

‘Vulcan telepathy is not carried in clear paths of RNA, it is minutely part and parcel of all DNA protein traces, but it cannot be separated or sequenced. Every neural pathway contains its own amenability to telepathy—a kind of distinct nervous system—which is then coordinated through the rest of the nervous system.’

‘Then, whatever has happened—this link,’ Kirk exhaled, ‘It’s been accidental. Totally random except for the match up of genes.’

‘It would appear so.’

Kirk put his face in his hand and rubbed his eyes, he looked up and crossed his arms over his chest, ‘They were clever enough to create, but not clever enough to think of all the probable outcomes.’

‘More like they didn’t care about the ethics,’ McCoy said. 

‘I don’t know which worse…’ he murmured, ‘What about everything else?’

‘He is still programmed, there’s very little randomness in his DNA, I’d compare it to someone tossing dice and then turning them all face-up on sequential numbers. You can’t fake true randomness or production. But I knew what to look for — I had Khan’s stats on tape, and I have to say, there's nothing else that would indicate he’s a eugenic product.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘With Khan, it was easier to read because he was an adult, but the boy is so young and—he’s complicated by being Vulcan and Human. What might the perfect heart rate for a Human child and Vulcan child are different — he lands somewhere in between, same with blood pressure, or he lands on the far end of one and perfect range for the other in some areas like white cell count — it’s all over the place. To put it plainly, there isn’t any clear-cut distinction beside the fact that the imprint for his DNA was organised using a computer, and then multiplied and arranged by one,’ McCoy shrugged. 

‘You’re saying he’s a failed experiment,’ Kirk said quietly.

‘Hundreds of years of science…and we haven’t solved nature versus nurture if it were that simple…hell, I don’t know Jim,’ he said. ‘I don’t what know compels a person or a group to do this other than the possibility that they’ve been developing tech and throwing everything at the wall simply to see what sticks. No moral code, no personal limitations. And certainly no ethics.’

‘What was he doing on Farius Prime?’

‘I couldn’t get a blood or marrow sample from him,’ he shook his head, ‘I was worried he’d drop dead like a chinchilla every time I got closer than two feet to him, but I’ll bet if I carbon tests then he wouldn’t be from there.’

‘That is pertinent,’ Spock said. ‘They were likely transporting him.’

‘He can speak, according to Chapel, although he won't know anything,’ McCoy said, and they both rubber-necked toward him. ‘Mind you his vocabulary is either limited or he’s too anxious, but whoever has had custody of him for the past year had started teaching him.’

McCoy cleared his throat, ‘It may be worth meeting him properly,’ and began out, leading them out the door. They took a left and one bulkhead panel over, entered the rec room. It was the smallest of the rec rooms; two folding recliner chairs facing out to a top to bottom pane, a cabinet for games and books, always gathering dust, a low, end table and in the left corner, a door to a bathroom. Nothing more nothing less.  Captain Pike had half claimed it when he received his commission, Spock said it was where he had preferred to discuss the work. As they entered the lights came up, and Kirk thought of Pike, body on Talos IV and mind on Talos IV too and wondered what dream he was living through at that very moment, what simple pleasures, as free and complete and held as any Human could wish to be, was he granted? And at the low cost of unreality too. Most people lived in their fantasies anyway, what Pike had was just an advanced form. 

The lights came up and their own reflections looked back from the port where darkness was sleeping beyond them, pierced by few stars. The three of them stood like spectres come for a debt, half-materialised and ghostly. The boy was curled on the chair which was unfolded but not reclined and he had been sleeping. He rose his head blearily. They kept a careful distance from him, crowded by the door. He sat up with the uncoordinated and exhausted adjustment of a foal and blinked and in better light Kirk could see him now, and understand the features of his face as permanent forms. His hair had been whipped up into a storm of dirt-gold by static electricity and swept to the side and his pointed ears stuck out a bit, he rubbed his eyes by the heels of his hands. When he looked at them he went still and held onto the armrest. 

First, he looked at McCoy who attempted a weak smile. Then, his eyes travelled to Spock, his brows were level but they were an unmistakably Vulcan shape and he rose them and peered at him for a long, long time. Spock was impassable by turns with his hands clasped behind his back, but then his shoulders softened and Kirk watched carefully in case he fell again. He didn’t. What he did was worse, mouth flattening with only a hint and a light came into his eyes, which was terribly sad. The boy rested his head by the back of the chair and kept staring. There was a connection of shared experience, and the melancholy seemed so imminent that it swept even the Humans in the room under. McCoy crossed his arms and stared at the ground. 

‘Spock,’ Kirk muttered, he touched his shoulder lightly and pressed it. Spock blinked as if a trance had been broken and turned to him, and at the same time, the boy looked at him too.  ‘Are you alright?’ 

Spock swallowed and dropped his hands to his sides, nodding incrementally. Kirk let go. 

‘He doesn’t have a name,’ McCoy muttered and his voice came from a faraway place. The room was heavy with the sober reality of the boy’s vulnerable life, a manmade glitch in the symposium of obscure conflict, but life no less. He hadn’t been born, but like the three of them he would die one day, and that was enough to know him as one of their own if for nothing else.

‘I didn’t expect he would,’ Kirk answered lightly. 

‘No, but there’s a sequence stitched into his shirt,’ McCoy said.

‘What is it?’

‘C, forty-seven, twenty-three.’

‘The sequence does not indicate much without context,’ Spock said. 

‘C4723,’ the boy said. He was still watching them carefully, and with their attention directed to him he repeated himself, ‘C, four, seven, two, three.’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ McCoy said.

The boy continued to look at him. Slightly confused, maybe.

'Well,' McCoy exhaled, 'I’ll be damned, I think he’s correcting me.’

He pointed to himself with two fingers, shotgun—C4723—it didn’t make it any more of a name, but he seemed adamant.

‘Well, Spock, congratulations are in order,’ McCoy muttered.

‘—Bones.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing,’ Kirk shook his head. He turned to the boy, ‘I'm Kirk, this is Spock. You're on the starship Enterprise. ’

He seemed to consider the information, then frowned to himself and asked, ‘What is Enterprise?’ 

Spock glanced between them, ‘I believe, he may understand what a starship is,’ he said lightly, ‘what escapes him is this ship, specifically.’

‘It’s our ship,’ Kirk tried again, he couldn't quite balance how to address him, a little awkward and stilted. He'd never been particularly good with children, ‘I’m the Enterprise's Captain.’

The wall comm chirped, Kirk glanced across at McCoy and Spock and went to get it, ‘Yes?’

‘Security Officer Giotto here, Sir—I’ve just tried for the third time to speak to Captain Nessa. So far nothing. She has barely moved since we brought her in.’

'Is she awake?’

‘Yes, Sir,’ he answered, ‘I recommend you speak to her, given you have more rapport.’ 

_Rapport_ , he wanted to laugh at that, _rapport—a good joke, Giotto_ , he thought bitterly. 

‘Alright, I’ll be there soon.’

**ETA — 48 HOURS & 42 MINUTES**

He stood outside for a long time with his arms crossed and watched her and waited for her, to give her space—her anger and vitriol whatever output it would need. More time than he could afford had passed when her eyes moved incrementally, not to his face, but to his neck, and the long striae of bruises her hands had left. Her eyes were glassed wide and Kirk’s blood stained the hollow under her left eye and her cheek and she had left it to oxidise brown like warpaint. Her wrists were perched over her knees like they’d been snapped and rubberised.

Kirk exhaled and brought up a string of words, ‘We are on a course toward Federation space. I’m sorry, but your ship was destroyed by the Romulans.’

‘Yes, you may be.'

‘It was already too late by the time we left. I'm sorry...sorry about your friend too.’

She didn’t seem to hear him, and went on, ‘I worked for a long time. On Orion, as it was on your planet a long time ago—the work we could afford to do changed with the season. _Rakeyel prittes shale:_ to live by the sun, we call it. What you should know, is that it is not a constant way to live, but we take pride in change as a people. Outworlders do not know it, but we value friendship very highly, so we welcome the changes because it brings us more connection…and…and it’s very important for us to share things, even food. You call it breaking bread.

With us, it’s a gesture of affection to ask from something from someone’s plate. In the warmer seasons, there were ferns that grew on our tenements and they bore fruit. These fruits fit into a palm, they're blue, full of pulp, and sour-sweet…on hot nights we sat on top of our houses and would eat. There are many recipes from this fruit— _pilaeya_. We talked. It was dusty that time of year and it would sit in our hair and when we told our stories and moved, it would rise off in puffs…and there would be some music coming from the windows below where someone had left their player on…and whoever the joker of us was would dance—in a funny way—if you could understand. 

A long stream of silence followed, and when he thought she had passed into another episodic haze, she went on, ‘And all these things are finished. It could never be the same for me again. It will now only exist in my head. It will die with me and the people who remember it. On the Volan we spoke about it as a goal, but that is gone too. But we knew we were lying to ourselves.’

Her eyes switched up into his, they were dark and leaden ball bearings, ‘You killed Rissa, I should say—we did…from the thirteen of us left, he was silly. Less so, when things got difficult in the last years, but he was always the one reaching into our plates,’ she reached out and touched her chin in thought, and her eyes were strung up with all cobwebs of the past, ‘I met him a long time ago working a shipyard—work for warm weather—and we were clearing the back of the yard and he found _pilaeya_ growing onto the fence. People like Rissa are good at finding homes, if you can understand what I mean. 

So, now, Kirk, I don’t care what Starfleet chooses. It won’t matter—I’ll never see the stars of home again.’

**ETA — 27 HOURS**

‘If we don’t turn custody over to Starfleet as soon as we enter Federation space, we’re automatically going to be under a charge of treason—and they will find out one way or another.’

‘Do you have any idea what they’re going to do to him?’ McCoy spat.

‘My duty is to this ship, our mission and the crew.’

‘The hell it is now! He’s a living, breathing thing—he’s a person, a life—anyway, you have no idea what happens to eugenic discards do you?’

Spock watched them, Kirk had noticed that he’d been tired out by interacting with the boy. They had gathered in McCoy’s office after a shift on the bridge, the routine of their jobs. That never went away no matter the circumstances, especially not when the rest of the crew didn't know. Now, Kirk was seeing spots, synapses misfiring after forty-eight sleepless hours and gut burning through with five cups of coffee. Everything was speeding up and ripping away from him and he had to make a decision on the back of a million considerations. 

‘We’re running out of time, Bones, it’s not just us either — there’s a whole fleet to think about.’

‘Well, at least listen to me for another minute, then after that, you can say it’s the right choice after all,’ McCoy said lowly, he stood up from his seat with his arms crossed, and came a step closer to where Kirk was standing, ‘I doubt it came up in your academy lectures Jim, but we heard about it, that for every Khan those scientists made there were at least ten people, kids to begin with, that weren’t suitable, whose nature just wasn’t what they had in mind. 

It wasn’t different to any other war — their leaders needed stoolies and they needed bodies on the ground to go ahead and die on the front lines but at the end of the day, when it came down to it, some of those so-called ‘superhumans’ they trained and raised just weren’t cut out for killing. In the early days, they took it from the old wars, world war one and two — that deserters were shot. Kill or be killed.’

‘—what’s your point, Doctor? Starfleet isn’t filled with eugenic scientists—‘

‘—the point I’m getting to is simple, it doesn’t matter who or what Starfleet is — they’re bureaucrats back on Earth, you know that. Out here we’re in undiscovered country, but back there? Hell, they’re not going to see anything but the sum of the other side’s intentions—they won’t see a kid, they’ll see a eugenic result and a ticking time-bomb. They’ll pull him apart thread by thread to understand that, and he’ll never be a person, he’ll never become anything more than they think he will—’

‘What then! All I'm hearing are more problems,’ Kirk snapped, ‘What’s your solution?’

By now, McCoy’s breath had shortened, chest rising and falling, ‘I don’t know — but it can’t be as simple as handing over custody and making him their problem.’

‘What about the others we know they’ve made?’ Kirk muttered, ‘What’s going to be their solution?’

‘I don’t know,’ he repeated, ‘But we can’t do anything for them, but this boy—maybe he’s got a chance. Something…anything.’

‘In any case,’ Spock took the long silence to speak up at last. He remained seated on the other side of the table and he was calm and looked between them steadily, ‘You are both foregoing the fact that in either case I will remain linked to him.’

‘You said proximity was a factor,’ Kirk said, shaking his head in confusion.

‘To begin with,’ Spock nodded. 'It is relevant for the initial connection.'

‘I don’t understand,’ McCoy said coarsely. 

‘The link can only be properly severed by Vulcan healers.’

‘No,’ Kirk muttered, he could see and feel the conclusion Spock was striving toward from a lightyear away. He could see it punching through him and making him bleed everything out even now. ‘Spock…’

‘Once Starfleet is informed, I will naturally need to explain everything in detail,’ he said. ‘And when they take custody of him, I will accompany him.  Sooner or later we must visit Vulcan to resolve the link. If it will require a detour to Earth or Starfleet HQ, then so be it.’

Kirk rubbed a hand over his mouth, to hold in all his first thoughts and impulses. The notion of timing crept back into him again and filled him like smoke until his lungs reeked of it. It was the same feeling as missing the last train, or the end of a party when all the guests would leave and you were left with the mess and the inanely broken heart of an empty and dark home. And it was so goddamn arbitrary. He sat slumping onto the edge of the table. McCoy looked at him and the anger in his water-blue eyes were gone, and what had replaced it was a hundred-fold worse, and Kirk knew the look well, knew those eyes, the same eyes that had looked at him after Edith Keeler died and Sam and on and on and he felt as though he was stuck in a nightmarish circuit of loss. Not for the first time, McCoy pitied him.

‘Spock, you can’t be serious,’ McCoy said at last. 

‘It is the most logical solution,’ he said, ‘If I’m there, then I can ensure safe passage and speak as his proxy.’

‘You know how slowly things move at HQ? How much poking and prodding and testing they'll want before they let you on Vulcan?’ 

‘As you pointed out, Doctor, he is a person,’ he said quietly, ‘No less living than you or I, the only difference being that he is vulnerable to everything, and cannot understand the forces which are at work against him. He isn’t even aware of his own nature.’

‘But you didn’t cause this.’

‘My connection to him abides me, regardless of my own wishes,’ Spock said lightly. ‘I’ll accompany him. It is our best course of action.’

Kirk swallowed and it hurt. The worse part was that Spock was right. Everything in Kirk that was honed toward command knew it. Everything that was the Captaincy was certain, but he himself—the man that McCoy lay pity on, the man that had held Spock and made love to him and slept fast and warm in his shadow—that part was raw with objection. 

‘Captain?’ Spock’s voice prodded him. 

And again his wording was important, like leaving fate up to the flip of a coin. Perhaps if he’d said ‘Jim’, said it only the way he could, then it would have been different. 

Kirk dropped his hands to his lap, ‘I agree.’

‘Neither of you knows how long it would be,’ McCoy burst out, ‘Forget the rest of the mission, Spock — you don’t know how long it’s going to take and you’re going to be stuck.’

‘It is logical.’

‘Logical,’ McCoy echoed numbly. 

‘My decision is final,’ Kirk said slowly, he’d tripped into a dream state, possessed by the circuitry running under their feet. Inside him, there were plain sheets of metal and glass and mirrors and he was lost in the labyrinth. ‘Spock will go with him wherever he’s sent. And the Enterprise will go where she’s sent too. We’ll all have our orders soon.’

**ETA —10 HOURS & 02 MINUTES**

There was a moment when his presence on the bridge became superfluous, and he realised he was avoiding the inevitable. Young ensigns and Lieutenants sat the stations and diligently if nervously, compiling their work. There was a sense of everyone at an edge, even though they didn’t know the half of it. The general Human mood had always seemed like a peculiar thing—they had no direct connection, but if a sense of demise and malaise hung about his bridge then was as true as simple mathematics. You didn’t need any kind of telepathy to understand that feeling: the same tiredness that a runner feels close to the finish line when every muscle is protesting and set on fire. Relief in finality even if it’s going to be some sort of defeat; throwing your carcass across the finish line not by power but because of momentum. And it was momentum carrying the Enterprise into warp three. The repairs were more or less complete when they were forced out of the Paulson Nebula, but the ship wasn’t the same. The stars came into the viewscreen and sucked back into the past. Infinitude used to make him feel free, but now it was somehow arresting, if things were finite and known then he could do something, anything, about it. 

ETA nine hours and fifty-six minutes; on the back of that there was an indefinable, but a limited amount of time when Spock would have to leave and take the boy with him. Kirk put his face in his hand, that part he could be sure of—Spock’s departure—and everything else was still coming out of a deep, night fog. In the quiet darkness of his palm, he heard the bridge door sliding open and then shut. 

‘Sir?’ he recognised Yeoman Rand’s voice at his side a smattering of steps later. She always walked very carefully, organised to the last second—precisely why she was such an excellent Yeoman. 

He looked up at her and forced a smile to shield her from this dismal feeling in him. The hollow tunnel he was rushing into headfirst. So what, they had been in far worse situations...

‘Coffee, Captain?’ she offered a cup. He had lost count of how many he’d had, but the ancient bean was rotting in his mouth from previous drinks. 

‘No, thank you,’ he shook his head. She acquiesced and checked her PADD. 

‘You’ve been up and around an awfully long time,’ she said when she looked up again. Her eyes were so pale they seemed transparent. Or he just couldn’t see colours anymore. Whatever it was, the redness of her uniform was screaming at him. 

‘There’s been a lot of work to do.’

‘Of course,’ she said, then handed off the PADD for him to sign: scheduling, that part was relatively unchanged. Three casualties from the scuffle with the Romulans but no fatalities. Although, one Lieutenant was in a critical condition from burns she suffered. He skimmed through, then signed under McCoy’s name and handed it back.

‘Is that all?’ he asked. 

‘Well, actually,’ she made a quiet cough, ‘I know it isn’t the time, Sir, but I consider it a part of my duties.’

‘Yes?’ 

‘Happy Birthday,’ Rand smiled sweetly at him. She patted his arm resting on the edge. 

‘What, already?’ he half feigned it. He’d been aware of it and then he’d abruptly forgotten at some point. Anyway, what a goddamn mess to step into thirty-seven with. Thirty-seven and about to be cast out again, and displaced again in a matter of months. ‘Thank you, Yeoman.’

‘Anything else I can get for you?’

‘No, that will be all,’ he said. She tapped his arm and stepped away with one last gracious smile. 

He’d been inordinately young when he sat in this chair the first time. But now for all the accolades and the successes he realised he was coming up short. He rubbed his eyes with a vengeance. Anomalous shapes broke even in his vision. Spock was probably in the labs or maybe in his quarters meditating. There was nothing stopping Kirk from going to him, and yet he felt like it would take an unparalleled amount of bravery to do it. Something anxious and niggling like _Deja Vu_ or premonition was knitting the number thirty-seven repeatedly into his consciousness.

Whatever was reaching out to him was saying that once they separated this time, it would become permanent. And after all, he didn’t even have the energy to hate the boy anymore. In fact, he seemed a little less like a burden and more a thread of yarn that now connected himself and Spock. C4723. But he was the cause of this. It was a nonlinear form of entropy that made his head hurt, caving in the temples, burning up in the base of his skull. If he kept sitting around and staring at the main-view progress he was likely to lose his mind to cabin fever. 

He got up and handed off the bridge, then took the lift down. Stepping off two decks early, a sense of dim resolve resurged in him; maybe there was still time to think up a third option. A way to overcome the predictable odds. Stopping off at rec room three, he put in his code and went in. 

‘You put down a single card each time,’ Nurse Chapel was saying. As his eyes adjusted to the dim, stage lit view of the desk, two chairs were drawn up and Chapel sitting across from the boy; he paused and observed the cards. Chapel acknowledged Kirk with a glance. The boy a held half-deck that was about to spill out of his hands. She flipped down a card onto the table to demonstrate—ace of spades. 

‘Why?’ he didn’t put anything down, clutching his lot closer like precious commodities. 

‘Well, you say 'snap' when two cards match up. To win.’

His little face screwed up with a modicum of concentration, and then he looked up at her and raised his brow.

‘It’s a game,’ she explained.

He turned them over and began to spread them on the table. He paused for a long time on the face values, then picked up the Queen of Hearts, ‘Who is she?’

‘She's the Queen.’

He did not understand. After all, he still had no context. _Why, who, where, why, what_ — Kirk could practically see it swimming about the boy’s head. This strange isolation of thought meant he understood well, but adversely could understand with a lot of difficulties because of how little he had experienced mere existence. 

‘I’ll explain in a second,’ she said and stood up. The boy became aware of him and looked at him steadily. All Kirk saw was that same disconcerting echo of his own childhood, and felt a miserable pang of sympathy and guilt. It occurred to him that the boy was like a creature made for the fighting ring. It had happened on old Earth and it still happened in some other places, dog-fights and horse racing, or the creatures of similar disposition for similar purposes…subjugation of creation for the intention of winning by proxy. He felt ill, but he tried to smile at the boy, and raised his hand and waved to him loosely.

Chapel came to Kirk’s side and said something that he did not hear—the boy smiled back. And he seemed to surprise even himself because he suddenly laughed in a short burst and his eyes widened as if he had hiccuped unexpectedly, astounding and frightening himself at once. 

‘Would you look at that…’ Chapel observed quietly, her voice was sticky with awe. She cleared her throat, ‘I was just keeping him company. Did you need something?’

Kirk spoke, still looking at the boy who began sorting through the deck, ‘Isn’t it strange?’

She hummed, ‘I suppose it must be very strange for you…I can’t imagine that—but—may I speak freely, Captain?’

He nodded and turned to her. 

‘He’s not any stranger than the hundred other things that we’ve come across, unsettling maybe…but,’ she observed, ‘well, he’s a great deal less threatening — he’s just a boy.’

And her’s was the outside perspective that himself or Spock or McCoy didn’t have. And it was probably the closest thing to the truth, and the simplest. The boy picked up another card and waved it over his head. 

‘Who is this?’ he asked, looking toward Chapel. 

‘The Jack of Clubs,' Kirk answered him instead. 

‘Jackofclubs? On the Enterprise?’ he looked at him curiously. 

‘No, not really,’ Kirk smiled too, he crossed his arms and took a step closer.

‘But he is on this starship,’ he said, then pointed at him, ‘Kirk, on the Enterprise,’ then he pointed to himself, ‘C4623, on the Enterprise,’ and hoisted up the card, ‘Jackofclubs, _on_ the Enterprise.’

Kirk carefully took the card from him gently by a corner, ‘This little symbol is a club,’ he said, pointing it out, ‘And this position, is a Jack—he's just a picture.’

‘Picture of Jack,’ he nodded, reaching out and taking it back. And then stubbornly tacked on, ‘On the Enterprise.’

Chapel burst out laughing, covering her mouth with a hand, the boy looked at her in bewilderment and Kirk bit back a grin, ‘Yes, technically, you're right.’

He had taken the preposition ‘on’ to its nucleus, breaking it down to the absurd level. His mind seemed to work in a peculiar way—methodical to the last. It was a stark reminder of the way Spock often worked. Kirk glanced up at the chronometer on the wall, counting down…nine hours and thirty-two minutes. No new solutions, nothing lasting. He was no closer to keeping Spock aboard, just closer to losing him.

‘I have to go,’ he said soberly, ‘Thank you, Nurse—as you were,’ he hesitated and looked at the boy, smiled lightly, ‘Goodbye.’

The boy turned to him, ‘Goodbye,' and, as if it took a minute to think about it, he arranged his face into a smile too, and encouraged by the feeling it brought on it amplified to a quick and genuine grin.  ****

**ETA — 9 HOURS & 25 MINUTES**

He was in his room. Waiting, or killing time, or expelling an intimate outpour of thought that couldn’t be translated into words—and, importantly, calling out to Jim in a way that he recognised could only be unique to him, though at first, he thought he imagined it: cat-gut vibrations of sound, peeling back thousands of years. The space around them was cluttered with dead and dying stars and when this music was heard for the first time on Vulcan, their decay had just begun. Other stars were just being born. Jim detoured through his own quarters, picking up his copy of Whitman on the way, going through the bathroom, brushing his teeth, and knocking. 

‘Come,’ his voice came, the music stopped. 

He entered cautiously. Spock was sitting on the bed, barefooted, uniform slacks and black thermal. The glowing red light of his blown glass Vulcan ornamentation came and went over his features. Jim stopped halfway across the room, just short of the divider. There was a scenario in his head where Spock would ask him if he needed something, _Captain —_ and then there would be a tragic silence and coldness and that would be it. 

What Spock said instead was, ‘I did not know if you would come.’

‘I didn’t know if I should,’ he answered lightly, ‘but I wanted to.’

Spock looked down at his strings in concentration, he slid a thumb across a low and barely audible note, ‘In any case, I was waiting,’ he murmured.

It would be an easy and transparent and irrefutable lie to tell; _I was busy on the bridge_ , and it would wrap him up in his braids in a way that would make him inaccessible to Spock’s contempt or even his anger. Jim realised he had expected Spock to be angry at him. But he looked up at him and he only saw that he was open and calm. 

‘Spock, we don’t know which way they’ll rule once we explain everything,’ Jim said. He was suddenly past the pretences of command. As Captain, he was choosing one thing, and as himself: he wanted the other, no matter the cost, ‘Our work has been invaluable to Starfleet until now.’

Spock only glanced up at his chronometer across the room, then back, ‘We do not have expendable time,’ he said, ‘to waste speculating.’

‘And que sera sera, I suppose,’ his laugh was chalky. 

‘Jim, whatever it may turn out to be—it will be our duty,’ he said, ‘That much is certain.’

And he couldn’t stand being so far from him anymore. Jim swept to the bed in two strong steps, dropping the book somewhere on his way before taking Spock’s face between his hands and kissing him hard. The lyre slipped from Spock’s lap and cartwheeled onto the ground, protesting with pangs smothered in its fall. Spock pulled him closer, and Jim broke away just long enough to slip an arm under his back and seal them rib to feet, struggling to kick off his boots in the tangle with his eyes shut and gathering as much of Spock to himself as close as he could. Spock had folded him in his arms and kissed him earnestly, mouth already opening and gasping in some dizzy breaks of adjustment. He went up in flames so quickly—dry timber in an explosion of activity—reactivity. It was only their second night of being together, but even as he kissed him, Jim could not fathom how he opened up to him, with this shimmering readiness and vaguely contained power. He didn’t have to wonder for a second if Spock really wanted him: he said it with his every move, every kiss, and buck of his narrow hips and in the clutches of his desperate hands at Jim’s sides. 

This time they weren’t particularly slow. There was distressing friction between them. Spock reached for the hem of his golds and ran his hands up the plains of his back—‘ah, ah,’ and they were dry and not hot, but with that particular coolness of the flip-side of a pillow. Spock skated his hands up to his shoulders and stretched the material of his shirt until there was a taut rip. That clinched it. It shot a hole straight through Jim’s gut, and he pulled away and it caused Spock hands to slip out of his shirt and firmly hand onto the edges of his hips and his ass while he took off his shirt over his head and threw to the ground. Spock immediately reached up again and touched his chest, and drew careful fingers from his collarbones to his nipples and and and Jim shut his eyes, widening his splayed legs and bracing down against Spock’s erection now pressed flush under his ass and his taint, and swallowed the first cry and when Spock thumbed his nipples a little harder he failed to contain a second cry. And on and on shaking busting pushing the angle of their hips was like intricate puppeteering that set into motion the next series of acts; Spock undid the clasp of his own pants; Jim stood up dizzily and undressed; all the way watching Spock undressing too; he sat astride him again; took both their cocks in his hand and became riveted to some end; and; and; and; Spock took his wrist and Jim paused and bent low and kissed him sweetly. 

Spock held him close and said, ‘I would like t-to experience…’ he pushed his forehead into Jim’s sweating temple, and by way of meaning, he took Jim’s cock and moved his hand at an indistinct angle, applying pressure in a way that made Jim punch out the air and turn inward and kiss his mouth messily on a groan. 

‘You want me on top?’ he asked.

‘If you’re a-amenable to it.’

Jim’s mind swam in the past of their first experiences, the night, then, the shower in the morning. Spock had not seemed inexperienced when he pressed him flush to glass and slipped close and tight and pushed into him with one, then two fingers and held him captured under the beating water for a long time, then asked him if he could and in answer to a disordered nod adjusted himself and entered him, and thrust in perfect variations of rhythm for long enough and with precision enough that Jim came hard and fast. 

A half-huck of pleasure bloomed in Jim’s throat as he remembered the feeling. He nodded blindly. He had wondered what he would feel like, but he hadn’t considered the parameters of what Spock was willing to do. The revelation of reversal seemed to stretch them both out against the phantasmagorical odds past becoming just good lovers to each other, but possibly learned ones specific to all of each other’s needs. That thought made a dark blot of longing and wanting in Jim's heart all at once. 

Jim kissed him again with a little more and nodded.  Spock swallowed visibly, his eyes were dilated beyond reason. Jim framed his face between his elbows on the bed; he was beautiful even in disorder, even with his hair thrown out of sorts and raddled on his forehead and beginning to shine with Jim’s sweat since he himself sweat so little. Jim realised how hot it was in his quarters and that he liked the all-encompassing and carrying heat. Without anything left to say, Spock pushed him off with a short kiss and began to turn his back to him—‘Spock, wait,’ as appealing as the traps of his back and curves of narrow muscle, and the hair on his thighs was, Jim stopped him, reaching over and guiding him onto his back carefully, saying, ‘I want to see you. Your face.’

Spock blinked, he became greener with his pleasure and bashfulness, pressing his lips together only to nod. Jim kissed him and set about diligently organising everything, ready to explode on a tenacious left-bend of pleasure. He felt liable to come apart every time Spock moaned over him as he spread lubricant down with a shaking hand, working it into him slowly and gradually until the veins at the base of his throat stood out with strained pressure of holding screams. When he was ready he guided his legs over his shoulders and balanced himself and very very carefully tilted it. Spock’s eyes rolled shut and his mouth fell open wordlessly. Jim watched him and held the side of his neck and his shoulder and rolled in. His own vision shuttered; he was was very tight and Jim had an urge overcoming him to begin pushing in mercilessly, his terror and fears collided with closeness. Spock put his hands around his shoulders and embraced him tight until he bottomed out and his face was buried in the crook of his neck. Jim smelled the charcoal, graphite edge to Spock’s scent overlaid with his musk.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked, pausing.

‘Yes, yes,’ Spock answered and adjusted. ‘Jim…’

‘I know,’ he answered and as he pulled back minimally and pushed in and listened to Spock gasping by his ear, he felt transported to some other continuum. And it was indeterminable and the brilliant slivers of joy met with the sadness of every passing moment, and their colours were muddied in the waters of some vague anguish—that premonition that drove toward the truth with every entry and withdrawal and Jim knew that his thoughts were as real to himself as they were to Spock and that his feelings were soaking into him and filling them both with dread as their bodies climbed through the anticipation of sex. It all ended in a prolonged sigh and in a confusing shamble of arrival and departure. They collapsed together, panting and Jim withdrew and put his face in his chest and felt that his cheeks were wet but whether with sweat or tears it was impossible to tell. 

* * *

Later, everything was still. Jim held Spock and was in turn buried in his arms too and parts of his body seemed to be lost along with Spock’s limbs. No end or beginning…no, it was all an end. Some kind of an end. 

‘I believe,’ Spock began in a coarse whisper, ‘that I do not know the time,'  and he thought about it for a long moment, finding the hand Kirk had flattened against his chest and holding it, weaving his fingers through and locking them firmly, ‘My margin of error is within fifteen minutes.’

‘It’s alright.’

Spock just hummed, and Jim kissed his cheek and the shell of his ear and settled again. They were in imbued and held in a dream state together, awake and asleep too. Words came out on a nearly involuntary and sadistically optimistic slight to Jim, ‘Whatever happens, it won’t take long,’ he said, ‘And it’ll be good in the end.’

‘A second commission?’ Spock asked.

‘No, probably not,’ he answered, ‘Although, I don’t really know any other way to live. Being out here…it’s been the natural state of things, and whatever else it is, I'm used to it.’

‘You were meant to be here,’ Spock said.

‘Sea-drift,’ he said. He sighed and watched Spock’s profile so close his features were blurred, ‘Would you still want me if I were someone else? — not this, you understand?’

Jim would not begrudge him if he gave an answer that wasn’t _yes._

‘I have come to recognise, that in spite of my best efforts to maintain emotional control and discipline, you disrupt me,’ Spock said, ‘to my essence. What I _want_ is immaterial, Jim. Yet, I do. Unconditionally.’

He took a few seconds processing it, revelling in it.

‘It will be good in the end,’ Spock repeated his own words back to him, he moved up and lay balanced on his arm, then captured the side of Jim’s face with his hand. It was been a weak and wishful promise when Jim had said it and it was one now.

Jim looked into his eyes and even with their astounding and steeled certainty, he realised he did not believe him. _There is going to be a war over this_ , he thought, _they’re going to start a war, and I’ll be in it and you will too._ In explicit terms that were less than words, but more than feelings—maybe…something in the vein of retroactive memories: Jim felt his own death knocking at the door. 

Spock clenched his jaw. 

He immediately knew that Spock had heard him. Or had gleaned an impression, ‘I’m sorry,’ Jim whispered, 

‘A feeling is not much to go on,’ Spock said what he’d said to him years ago on the bridge. 

‘Then,’ Jim asked plainly, ‘Why is it the only thing I can think of? It’s not that I’m afraid of dying—but that this is all it was. A handful of years on ships, watching people die, running through logs—and then what? And just when it made some sense when life was becoming more…’ he reached out and traced his chin with a bent finger, ‘There is the potential that the sum of everything will be a lot of fighting, and we’ve managed to land in the middle of it.’

Spock didn’t say anything, he just leaned forward and kissed him lightly. He turned his head and Jim knew he was looking at the chronometer. 

‘Don’t tell me,’ Jim said preemptively, stroking his shoulder to his forearm. 

‘No,’ Spock agreed. He untangled his legs, stood up and went to the bathroom. Jim shut his eyes and listened to the vague sounds, nothing he could distinctly understand with sleep so close at the door. While Spock was gone, he fished his underpants from the ground and pulled them on. On his way back, Spock picked up the Whitman and lay beside him again, he had pulled on a pair of grey track pants. They leaned up into the headboard and silently Spock handed over the book, kissed his temple and leaned his forehead there, ‘Happy birthday, Jim.’

Spock added, ‘Seventy-five,’ tapping the edge of the book, inclining a brow.

'Lovely, that you think I could wear seventy-five so well,' Jim chuckled as he flipped through, 'But I'm afraid it's thirty-seven this year.'

'Had I not known it for a fact, I wouldn't have estimated correctly,' Spock said lightly, and the joke was burning in his eyes too.

'Flattery isn't going to get you anywhere, Mister,' Jim grinned. He pulled back a page, then another, the final passage of a poem fell on page seventy-five, he cleared his throat and read it out loud, ‘ _Failing to fetch me first, keep encouraged; Missing me one place, search another; I stop somewhere, waiting for you_.’

And his voice took them toward the next day. A long day with no sun. 

**ETA — 25MINUTES**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay, it took a bit of time drafting the format of this chapter. Also, I made all the Orion terms up because I could not find a reliable dictionary. 
> 
> Thank you for reading - please let me know what you thought, I would really appreciate some constructive feedback!
> 
> [CH15 Cover](https://vvlcant.tumblr.com/post/612459786385162240/ch15-out-here-were-in-undiscovered-country-but) / CH16 coming early next week!


	16. St Lawrence Seaway

He walked out of his quarters with his neck splinted in his formal collar, and before he knew it the rotating rolling movements between crew bodies at work handed him off to his fate. He didn’t know how long the competency hearing would go, but he knew where it would terminate. Opting to walk deck to deck, he took Jeffries tubes just to be laid in with the Enterprise, and by the same token, he bought himself time. 

As he went he counted the cycles of existence that had completed in her hulls. For a long time, he had played along and worked along and been alone. As keeper of this industrious, interstellar city he had charged the work and overseen life; officiated weddings; guided funerals; broken up fights and beaten his teeth in with every kind of threat. In a way, he had lived every possible life. And nothing in his oath had asked for loving dedication, but he’d given that too. Believing somehow, that the more he gave, the closer he would come to the truth buried at the heart of their galaxy since in some way it had to be truth buried at the heart of himself and everyone he’d known. Then the galaxy had come up endless and short too and he couldn’t tell when that had hit. You took yourself and your problems wherever you went.  ****

The idea that escaping a place would mean getting closer to the truth was something George Kirk had firmly believed. He'd said, _Iowa is landlocked. So the main way out, is up._ At the time he was probably around forty and his temples were getting a little grey. He would have been on his second command and his name was cropping up more and more in the outlets. For all his braids, he hadn’t been any more right. If you looked up the maps another route presented itself immediately: you could drop into Lake Michigan and take the St Lawrence Seaway up and east into the North Atlantic. Then, suddenly, the whole world opened up around you. What he'd said he'd said in exaggeration. Maybe. 

Then, the Great Lakes were in the last ebb of self-regulation since the climate crises of the twenty-first century had been quelled. Nature was resilient but it had taken time for it to settle; to return to a pre-industrial state and for the protective measures by humankind from humankind to get on the so-called tracks. A lot of summers his mother, Sam and him and would get on the I-94 from Central Avenue with the hover packed rattle-loose and drive the three-thirteen miles to that shore. She would play Fairport Convention, Donovan and maybe Grateful Dead if they behaved. Winona Kirk didn’t go in for the maladies of Leonard Cohen. She had insisted she was less poetic. The songs they didn’t understand they learned the lyrics to anyway and screamed out of tune. Thin and high and young voices whipped away on the passing miles, along the green, water-skimmed breeze coming for them; and they, it. Keeping her hands at two-and-ten with a little smile maybe she tapped her fingers occasionally; no rings to make noise; hair out in a dark stream over her shoulders. After they passed through Chicago, they would take the ferry up toward Superior. The spray would freckle his face and clutching the red railings he would go onto his toes.

Now, as he came up past rec room three he didn’t break stride. A pair of Lieutenants in golds greeted him and he smiled politely in return. Past the officer’s mess; the observation deck; the engineering chute for tapes; he went on. Past the corridor which led onto the transporter room. For the first time since leaving Spock’s quarters, he involuntarily thought of the approaching goodbye again. He could see it with crystal clarity as if he had already lived it through and through. They would not touch since Scott would also be there to operate the panel; Spock would hold up the Ta’al and meet his eyes and behind them, there would be an infinite warmth. The boy would be standing beside them, and Spock would have a comforting and steadying hand on his shoulder. Stepping onto the pads, it would be a matter of seconds before the edges of their bodies disintegrated to nothing. Then, it could be years. 

For all the time Kirk managed to kill, five minutes and change survived by the time he arrived in the briefing room. He was first in and was greeted by the neat and attentive chairs at the table, the customary pitcher of water and cups set out at the centre by the quartermaster. He poured a cup of water, numbly watching the long stream and it was a miracle that he didn’t spill a drop. But everything was simmering beneath the surface. Kirk unclasped his collar and sat staring at the ground between his boots. There were errant scuffs that had been made at one time or another, and likewise, there were other places the Enterprise was showing her age. Dents in walls and smudges at her skirting had appeared like liver spots, and there were the cracks in the Captain’s chair and the polished handle of the turbo-lift and countless other signs of the ship settling—and no again, _settling_ didn’t cut it either. She was on her way out. He knew better than to sugarcoat it for himself, but he had for a long time. 

She wore her five years like ten and he had to wonder if he did too. He probably did. They had aged rapidly and gracelessly together. What he’d said at the tail end of the first year to Spock had by now fulfilled itself; he had lived the ship’s life, forsaking his own. He stared down at the backs of his hands, they were rough-soft with the years and the work. He clenched them into fists and turned them over, opened them to his palms.

Barring miscalculated days, barring anything that was just a dark imitation on the horizon: that left him nine months at best. His challenge now, was to believe Komack, that he could and would pull the trigger on this. The first thing was that he wouldn’t offer him a fair trial, and he certainly wouldn’t offer Spock one. The hate would twist in the knife of every grievance he had tallied in his sick head. That left the others on the panel, but since he outranked them and was leading the inquiry he could direct the flow of information. When it came to its essential points, the issue was deceptively simple. And it wasn’t anything new. They may play up specifics and the routine and dredge events for the smallest nuggets for his comeuppance, but it boiled down to a thin red line. _Are you with us, or against us?_ No in-betweens. No greys. The service was the compass centre of every judgement. And if he wasn’t with them, they would have no cause to understand he was never against. To them, it would never occur that you could be on the third side of an issue. 

Admiral Komack’s raisin eyes, and acicular smile. Kirk could see it so clearly as it had been on Altair VI after their brief diversion to Vulcan for Spock’s Pon Farr. 

There had been a sense of hanging on a narrow wire as he currently was; approaching threat of seeing Komack who had made it abundantly clear that he disliked him, and that it wasn’t just business. The gardens at the inauguration dinner were riotous and had to be held from the path by plexiglass sheeting. Fresh borne flowers pressed their sepals forward and curled out their stigmas and insides, while back-row ones stroked right up in red. All blooms at hasty attention. It was cooly temperate and they were beamed down to their given coordinates, so far toward the axis of the planet, the sun was nearly always travelling horizontally. Six months of golden hours and six blue. Gold, at the time of the President’s launch.

‘If we’re putting in an appearance at this dinner, I don’t see how we could be considered absentees,’ he said to Spock as they began side-by-side toward the centre of noise.

‘It may be the missing rank and file that Admiral Komack did not take to kindly. After all, a gap in the guest list would appear somewhat disorderly.’

‘Rank and file,’ he muttered under his breath, ‘Diplomatic safekeeping is all good and well, but when you’re bootlicking the powers that be—that seems uncomfortably like old business to me, Mr Spock.’

His shoulder was stiff with their tussle. And there was the backlogged haze of Spock’s body above his. And Kirk had been carefully avoiding the thought since leaving orbit. He shut it out again, lengthening his strides and focusing on the sounds of their footfalls in tandem. 

‘Diplomatic appeasement still has its place. But perhaps less so on our level,’ Spock answered thoughtfully, and he must have been thinking of Ambassador Sarek. He clasped his hands behind his back, it had been comforting to see him return to his orderly self. He seemed redefined for Kirk and creased at new-folded corners. Prior to beaming down he had visited the ship’s dresser and had a haircut. He was wearing his indefinable cologne, spiced and deeply treacly. The sudden urge to shove his face closer and take a lungful made Kirk clear his throat. He put a few more inches between them as they walked. 

‘I don’t mean to be negative. I think I’m just tired,’ he said, ‘Don’t pay me any mind.’

That had been the wrong thing to say, Spock stopped short, ‘Jim.’

And he had been so smoothly avoiding what any of the events on Vulcan—the Pon Farr could mean. There was so much Kirk still didn’t understand, and more importantly, didn’t know how to ask. The last thing he needed was a repeat of the ‘birds and the bees’ discussion. Just the memory was enough to make him go red in the ears. He paused and turned to Spock, raised his eyebrows. They were nearly at the mouth of the soiree’s entrance, hidden by the final encased hedge and the sound of amuse-bouche and the mini silver forks they stuck in catered trays and the humdrum agreement of politics being traded, drifted to them. 

‘If you are unwell, it is possible for me to stand in for you as the commanding officer,’ Spock said, and he had this guilty look on his face, and his eyes flickered to Kirk’s chest; under his uniform, there was still a fresh bandage over the red and healing wound. 

‘Possible, but unnecessary,’ Kirk said easily and smiled. _Please don’t think I begrudge helping you_ , he thought. _Please, Spock._

Just as Spock intended to answer he was distracted by a newcomer. Kirk turned to see Admiral Komack striding out from the soiree’s exit. He was empirically as tall as McCoy,but he seemed taller. 

‘Captain Kirk,’ he said coolly. He did not offer a hand to shake. Well, that could be overlooked. Kirk had no expectations of rosy demeanour from him, it was well-known that he was a hawk. And it was plain in his eyes, which did not for even a second acknowledge Spock. 

‘Good evening, Admiral Komack.’

‘Yes, perpetually, here,’ he said, waving toward the sun. 

Kirk smiled thinly. He was tired the first time some high-up brass wanted a laugh for his wit and he was tired now. Spock, of course, was as humorous as a brick wall, but Kirk got the impression that he looked particularly unimpressed. Now that really did make him smile. 

Komack cleared his throat, he glanced over his shoulder and back, ‘There is a little time before they call us to our places, why don’t you take a walk with me, Jim,’ he walked right up and grinned that grin. Kirk almost laughed incredulously, but then Komack grabbed him by the nape of the neck like something between a dog and an older brother. ‘You don’t mind, Mr Spock, do you?’ he asked, coming between them, ‘Afterall, I imagine you’ve sharpened those immaculate Vulcan manners of your’s after your trip home.’

Spock raised a brow and said nothing. He gave Kirk a passing look and took his leave. Kirk itched to look back at him. But he thought his neck might snap by the way Komack had him. He began walking, dodging out of his grasp as smoothly as he could. 

‘Shall we, Admiral,’ he said, ‘They have quite a spread here, don’t they?’

‘Nothing compared to the inaugural breakfast,’ he caught up close to his elbow. 

‘Something on your mind?’

‘I thought you had something _you_ might like to say to me _,_ privately. Only polite to give you that chance,’ Komack said, he was well organised with his terms. Everything was a move to an end. 

Kirk glanced at him, crossing his arms, ‘Oh?’ he said, then did smile a real one and tried to inject it with as much arrogance as he could. 

Komack was forced to go on, ‘Your stop on Vulcan.'

‘Seeing as the Enterprise is in time for the dinner, I’d hazard saying no harm, no foul,’ Kirk said. Komack stubbornly led them left, on this far side there was an orange light shining off the glass. The valley’s quart-flank unfolded below, a blue-green carpet of grass and saccharine trees calling a margin just under the skimming sun. It all appeared arranged like a child's trainset.

‘You missed the actual launch,’ he said. His eyes seemed transparent and sharklike in the yellow pall of that forever-afternoon. 

Kirk nodded carefully, ‘Would you like an apology, Admiral?’ he turned to him.

The corner of Komack’s mouth twitched, ‘You insubordinate son of a bitch,’ he said, brows cutting low, ‘If were up to me you’d be halfway on your way to an indefinite ground assignment by now.’

‘Fortunately, we’re both here instead.’

‘Who do you think you’re addressing?’ here came the full wrath at a low tone fit for a public undressing. ‘I didn’t get where I am by being put upon by the likes of you. Listen closely, I will not repeat myself, you have passed by the skin of your teeth. Again. The only thing stopping me from throwing your ass in front of court marshall is that Vulcan matriarch and her connections.’

‘If you believe my behaviour warrants a review, by all means, don’t let T’Pau stop you.’

Komack bristled, he stepped closer, Kirk could feel his hot breath on his face, ‘You’re so clever, aren’t you? I’ve seen people like you. You don’t belong on a starship, Jim.’

‘And you’re free to hold that opinion,’ Kirk hit back.

‘It’s an opinion I happen to share with some people,’ he said, ‘You’ve made a mockery of the service, you know that? The braids you hold are tainted by your wearing them—but that was a given. But to so shamelessly twist things to your benefit this time…’

‘And what do you mean by that?’

‘You know exactly what I’m talking about.’

‘Enlighten me. Please,’ he got an inch closer to him.

‘ _Please_ ,’ Komack mocked, ‘Alright,’ he glanced around before letting him have it, ‘There are years of logs to back it up, but I don’t need records to see through you. You, and that FO of your’s, this elaborate charade you have got going on—the way I see it, he makes up a problem and you solve it and vice versa.

‘And the commendations, my goodness. Glowing at all times. Not a single fight, not a single word of complaint or annoyance in your logs…I’ll tell you this: he’s nothing more than a sycophantic elf. But I suppose someone like you needs a pal to help carry your ego. That half-breed probably gets some kind of sick satisfaction out of it, since he’s got so little of his own—oh, yes I’ve read his reports from the VSA too. He’s just some outcast with brains. Mister, let me tell you there are some new android iterations with more esteem. ’

Kirk made a sound of mild and light understanding, ’Well, Admiral, why didn’t you just say you were a self-righteous bigot?’You could have saved us both a lot of precious time.’

‘I’m calling it as I see it.’

‘Have you considered there is more than one way to see things?’

‘Let’s pretend you’ve heckled a minute for all the good it will do. What was the exact nature of your diversion to Vulcan?’

‘I’m bound by Vulcan law and tradition to keep it to myself, I’m sure T’Pau indicated as much. What you’re really asking me, is to prove my loyalty to you over Commander Spock.’

‘To Starfleet,’ he snapped, half-yelled. ‘The institution that has educated you, fed you—made you a man.’

‘I’m grateful for the opportunities I’ve been afforded, Sir,’ Kirk answered, ‘But I’ve earned my braids just as much as the next person.’

‘You would be less than dirt at the bottom of my shoe if you weren’t commanding the Enterprise,’ he said, ‘You’re not half the Captain your father was. And there’s another kicker, the Enterprise was practically fed to you on a silver spoon. Still, I’m not going to begrudge you any of that. But I do expect some sort of indication that you respect the chain of command.’

‘We could stand here until that sun,’ Kirk said with a side glance, ‘turns downside up and blue. Or as we say back home, till the cows come home. I have nothing for you, Admiral. Was that all?’

Something in Komack was frying up with rage and his jaw twitched and tensed. He looked toward the sun and reached some consensus within himself.

‘Remember this minute, Jim. I want you to remember it when the time comes; because mark my words it certainly will. Dog days are ahead. From now on I’m right behind you every time you look back. A five-year commission must seem like a long time when you’ve got all your hair on your head, and you’re full of hot air. It’s not. Afterwards, you’ll still have a lot of living left to do, and I will be there to make sure you do it with your nose in the dirt. And then where will that Vulcan shadow of your’s be? Can you answer that question comfortably?’

* * *

The door opened and Spock stood there, conjured. He blew into the room on a breeze, chest-first. He came to him like a dream, he stopped inside the threshold, and Kirk had an impression of the first time he had ever laid eyes on him. That first time, too, he was boggled by the insurmountable odds that they both existed at the same time in the same place. It had been beyond attraction. He denied it for a long time, but he knew that he had looked squarely into the face of his future. There was no other way to put words to it. Spock seemed to belong in the seams of an Altair VI summer, the melting mountain streams of the Rockies at springtime: a constantly impossible and present force.

What Komack and some others seemed to see when they looked at Spock, wasn’t what he saw.  With a flux of dread and panic, Kirk thought of the boy, his red-pointed Vulcan ears and Human laugh: an outcome of a lab with no birthday. If they revealed him, he and Spock would be cut by the same prejudices. And his eugenic nature would seem derivative of Spock the same way the moon was lit by the sun. He would break that thin line Spock had been swinging on his whole life-long. Trussed up, they would swallow Spock and the boy whole. For all intents and purposes to the checks and balances, to the hawks, they were one and the same.

‘Captain?’ Spock called him back, he must have been trying to catch his eyes for some time, because he moved closer. Just shy of touching him. He seemed adamant to remain professional and clipped, but the eyes he looked at him seemed to see through the ranks. 

‘Mr Spock.’

‘I thought I would be the first to arrive.’

‘No,’ he said softly, shaking his head and standing. He tugged at his hem.

Spock folded his hands behind his back and said nothing. Presumably, he was waiting. The air was so thick and hot it seemed to be spewing from every vent on the back of noxious sludge. 

Kirk remembered his undone collar. He felt so beaten up by it all, every damn thing. He tilted his chin up and stared at a dead corner of the bulkhead as he tried to put it back together, it was one of those metal clasps that are finicky at best and impossible at worst. His hands weren’t steady enough and he frowned to himself as he brought the two edges together and missed and missed and missed. 

Spock stepped up to him promptly and stilled his hands with his own. He didn’t speak as he pulled them down and put them by his sides, then reached out again. Kirk tried to meet his eyes, but Spock remained dead-set at his neck. He tried to clasp the collar but wasn’t having any more luck with it. Suddenly his hands died in their tracks, but he didn’t pull away. His eyes were affixed at Kirk’s throat, still a faintly bruised by Nessa’s hands. They were and weren’t colleagues again. Kirk realised it was obtuse to live in one definition or another. Spock was his partner, in every sense. 

‘The hearing will go according to plan,’ Spock said. His thumb lingered on his pulse, and Kirk knew he was counting it and he tried to stay calm for his sake. He’d do well to stay below one-twenty. 

‘Look at me.’

Spock did not look at him. 

‘Look at me,’ Kirk took his wrists, pressing them to his breastbone.

Spock met his eyes over their hands. 

‘We could find another way. It’s not too late.’

‘This is our best course of action,’ Spock ghosted fingers across his throat again, tracing patterns like a cartographer might map rivers.

At last, he focused and clasped the collar, straightened it and flattened out the wrinkles by smoothing his palms down to his rank and honour markings over his heart. His hands paused again, then he drew a short line with the pads of his fore and middle fingers, ‘Your Ferenterus ribbon is missing,’ he murmured. 

Kirk looked down and realised he was right; he’d forgotten to pin it on before he left, ‘Doesn’t matter,’ he shook his head lightly. 

Spock glanced at him again before dropping his hands.

The doors parted and admitted the rest of the group no sooner than Spock stepped back; McCoy, trailed by Scott, Uhura and Sulu, and a second communications officer for record-keeping, Lieutenant Gira.

McCoy stopped short of sitting and met his eyes meaningfully.

‘Anything you need to say, Doctor?’

McCoy's brow knitted, ‘I guess I’ve said everything I was ever fixing to. Just be sure, Jim.’

‘Alright,’ Kirk answered quietly, ‘We’re ready, then.’

As McCoy went, Uhura approached him next. She was holding a red tape in one hand and had a terse expression he didn’t have device enough left to decipher.

‘What is it?’ he lowered his voice, he pretended not to notice the tape until she was presenting it to him and it was unavoidable.

‘It’s a private encrypted message, Sir. It arrived for you earlier this morning,’ she said, ‘I didn’t have a chance to channel it down to your terminal…before.’

‘Thank you,’ he took it and turned it in his hands, _Iowa, Earth. Stardate 3478.98_

‘I thought you’d rather know about it now, Captain,’ she said lightly, and this meaning he could grasp and it took every reserve to pass from that second onto the next, ‘Could be a long shift.’

He nodded, ‘Please open a channel to Starfleet Command.’

‘Yes, Sir.’

He took the last seat at the table between Spock and Scott, and discreetly slid the tape on to the table label-down. Spock was looking at him from under his lashes. Kirk met his eyes and saw the questioning look, the nearly incidental indication of the tape. That feeling of a sticky ache under his ribs was becoming common so fast; to hurt and to prefer the hurt to nothingness. Kirk looked away and at nothing in particular and fought off speculating what news the tape had. 

The minutes went by tensely as Uhura pulled into the channel, and adjusted the frequency — timely to the second.

‘Connecting now. Stand by.’

‘Captain Kirk,’ the large screen powered up, and a half-table of Admiralty and Commodores faced him. At their head was Komack, straight shot in his uniform. He looked as if he’d come back from a holiday somewhere empty and warm. 

‘Admiral Komack,’ he nodded. ‘Council members.’

They all made some small motion of greeting. 

‘Glad you could join us in the land of the living,’ Komack said, ‘I half expected you wouldn’t make it to your own hearing, Captain.’

‘I had my orders, Sir.’

‘Good to see they mean something to you,’ he nodded. ‘Here with me, are Commodores Stalker, and Tunen and Admiral Kawachi—they will be joining me in making a final ruling regarding your competency to continue operating as Captain of the starship USS Enterprise. Is that clear to you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you in sound mind consent to a performance review based on your actions undertaken since—’ and he checked his PADD, ‘Stardate 3713.2,at which time the USS Enterprise suffered substantial damages in an anomalous debris storm?’

‘I do.’

‘Does anyone on your command team object on the basis of your legitimacy or identity as the real Captain James Tiberius Kirk?’

Around the table, there was utter stillness and Komack travelled the ranks one by one and picked their expressions clean.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘With the formalities out of the way, we’ll begin. Admiral Kawachi, I believe you have prepared opening questions.’

‘Yes,’ she nodded to him and consulted her PADD before squaring her eyes into Kirk’s, ‘Since the beginning of your command your submission of Captain’s logs have maintained a consistency rating of ninety-two percent—exemplary by any standard—barring, of course, emergencies when the Enterprise was out of range, and even then, it was rectified immediately. But presently there are two weeks of logs missing. I think to get a full understanding we need to be informed in detail about your actions since the time of the incident—which was leaked to the media in a breach.’

‘We would prefer a chronological approach, Captain,’ Stalker piped up.

‘I understand.’

‘Just before you begin,’ Komack interrupted, ‘There’s an indication you made several personal logs in that time, these are of course confidential unless your CMO sees fit to submit them, pending approval of your First Officer.’

‘Yes, that’s true?’

‘To clarify: you’re not going to submit them?’

‘It’s well within my rights to privacy,’ he answered, trying hard to keep the tightness out of his voice.

‘I don’t know about my colleagues, but I will treat it as less than forthcoming in my final decision,’ Komack nodded slowly, ‘What confuses this further is the reason your CMO has refused to submit them. Doctor McCoy, if you could please…’

‘With all due respect, Admiral,’ McCoy leaned forward, ‘If I didn’t think it was necessary to submit them, then they didn’t contain relevant information.’

‘No? I find that hard to believe at such a hectic time. That, supposedly, at a time the Captain couldn’t upkeep of official logs—that the personal logs would be thoughtless humdrum,’ Komack raised a brow, ‘How long have you known Captain Kirk?’

‘Eight years, give or take a few months.’

‘Professionally?’

‘We were friends before we served together. But I don’t see h—’

‘That’ll be all, Doctor,’ he said, ‘Commander Spock, how long have you known Captain Kirk?’

‘Four years, two months and twelve days.’

‘And is this in a professional capacity or a personal one?’

Spock took a considerable pause and Kirk saw his hands tighten, interlinked, on the desk, ‘He is my commanding officer.’

‘So, you two aren’t friends?’ he asked. 

‘Sir, Vulcans are not in the habit of making friends,’ Spock said, and it was one of those grey lies he could scrape by with; he didn’t count himself as completely Vulcan and he wasn’t necessarily making friends often. And yes, Kirk was his commanding officer. 

‘Not even with the other people your job requires you to spend every waking moment with?’

‘Proximity and friendship are not mutually inclusive.’

‘But shared experience and friendship are rarely mutually exclusive—it doesn’t matter, that wasn’t my question,’ Komack shook his head, ‘What I asked was, is Captain Kirk your friend, specifically?’

‘One term cannot pertain to all levels of familiarity. It is not a quantifiable term,’ he said, now being stubborn, now making their case worse. It spoke to his sense of compromise and indicated his tiredness and to know that Spock had been tired out made Kirk feel like they were flying in the blind. Throwing and catching chances with no net and very little hope. And all it did was file sharper Komack’s teeth. 

‘Look, Mr Spock, I understand that you are Vulcan, but please don’t mince words,’ he said. ‘I’ll put it this way: would you _quantifiably_ say that you are more familiar with the Captain than anyone else aboard the Enterprise? Yes or no.’

He blinked once, and Kirk could feel everything in him tensing.

‘Yes, because of my duties I work very closely with the Captain.’

He consulted his notes and talked with his head buried in them, ‘…And not the team of…thirty-two science officers you lead?’ his tone was drily rhetorical, and he didn’t give Spock any space to answer, ‘Admiral Kawachi if you will…’

‘Continue, Captain Kirk,’ she said coolly, ‘I will narrow it down: what happened after the debris storm?’

‘We were in need of extensive repairs after the incident,’ he began, clearing his throat and pushing past the stunned and heavy silence of Spock beside him. McCoy was grinding his teeth in his periphery. He’d need dentures by the end of the hearing at this rate. ‘We were forced to secure replacement components by contacting a non-‘fleet merchant.’

‘Mr Scott, if you please, which components were these? I will need serial numbers.’

Scott pulled up the responses and while he did, Kirk fought the urge to rub his eyes and wipe away the scene in front of him. All these closed and tight faces. McCoy had now lost his gaze to the wall, spinning out. Kirk tried to calculate the risk, but he had to work through it by his gut, one foot at a time, pulling himself along the rope threaded around his neck and into the future. 

And Spock would have to understand what this hedging of bets meant. He was reminded of those first, confusing conversations he had with McCoy in year one, in which he would try and stumble through the very new experience of meeting Spock and getting to know him. What was unique about the way McCoy approached him, was that he had read him immediately and understood him immediately and he had since spent every opportunity trying to change Spock. He’d seen him: how he struggled with being Human and Vulcan, and throughout their time he had tried to eke out one half from the other. Kirk, on the other hand, had never felt such an urge. 

He had said as much, and he had said it carefully, ‘Maybe I tease him about it sometimes, but I don’t want to change him. I couldn’t imagine him any other way.’

‘No?’

‘No,’ Kirk blinked, he wasn’t lying, ‘When I tease him, he understands we're joking. He gets me back too.’

‘Are you suggesting he has a sense of humour?’

‘Are you suggesting he doesn’t?’

‘If he’s got one, then it’s dry as June, Jim.’

‘Well, Doctor, I suppose that sort of humour just endears him to me.’

‘Careful, Jim,’ he answered in a smile. 

_Careful,_ he’d been warned. Had everyone seen this trajectory but himself? He had been a comet heading for aeons to a known destination and his crashlanding was predetermined by chaos. All this came down to was loyalty again. When the Psi 2000 contagion had invaded them, he and Spock had clapped hands (what he could now understand was a violent and crushing kiss of sorts) and that had been the moment the Enterprise had begun to fade. Kirk swallowed: everything he’d done after that was somehow signed away to him. If it happened to align with the Enterprise, with their work; that was a testament to Spock’s diligence and hard work, his intellect and empathy and kindness. He had made him a better man… _made you a man_ — that’s what Komack said, but Starfleet hadn’t been the be-all and end-all. 

‘—k? Kirk?’ they were hailing him. Time to land. He blinked.

He looked at the screen. ‘Yes?’

‘Are we interrupting you?’ Komack spoke with acid. 

‘I apologise,’ he said. ‘What was the question?’

‘What did Captain Nessa say was the cause of the debris storm?’ Commodore Tunen resumed her line of questioning.

‘Her belief was that a cloaked Romulan vessel opened exist hatches on warp-turn, and expelled the debris on momentum—we still don’t have confirmation of her theory,’ he sipped his water, the chronometer had rounded out the second hour of the meeting. It was going quickly. ‘Apparently, the original target was the starbase, Relva VIII, since it was the closest outpost to their operations.’

‘Operations on Farius Prime? Such as?’

‘Yes— extensive cargo trade of illegals goods.’

‘Mr Spock, is this verifiable?’

‘It is in line with our examination of the fragments from the debris storm,’ Spock answered.

‘But wouldn’t you say that a phaser, or torpedo or any number of other weapons would be better equipped to destroy a starbase?’ Commodore Stalker asked. 

‘I believe,’ Spock said, ‘That due to the sensitive nature of their operations they wished to remain covert. If the destruction of Relva VIII could look like an accident, then it would fulfil that purpose.’

‘And the Enterprise interfered.’

‘Indeed.’

‘How can you be sure your ship wasn’t the original target?’

‘We weren’t,’ Kirk spoke before Spock could, razoring close. 

‘And the second attack, coming out of the Paulson Nebula?’ Tunen frowned at him. ‘It doesn’t seem entirely incidental.’

‘Again, I have no reason to suspect they were doing anything but protecting an area they have vested interest in trading throughout. We simply strayed too close without knowing it. It has happened before, on record.’

Spock turned to him incrementally, blinking once. Kirk refused to meet his eyes. Across the table, McCoy’s eyes shot to him too, and he had always had a weak poker face. His jaw was just short of dropping.

‘You say that you evaded the Romulans—leaving you inconclusive data on the Paulson Nebula. There is ground for that to be suspect. No other ships have had any run-ins with Romulans recently,’ she said, ‘Doesn’t that suggest to you that the Enterprise has become a specific target? That you might have something they want?’

Kirk hit the trench of open rebellion with both feet. He took this moment into his hand, he could see the sun coming up over the east, St Lawrence Seaway out into the North Pacific. He could see it now. His hands were clenched so tightly over his thighs that half-moons of his nails began biting into his palms. ‘Think of? No, nothing immediate.’

‘So, you can’t think of any reason why the Romulans would be targetting you or the Enterprise?’ Komack asked, his eyes were pricks of black. 

Breathe out. Komack didn’t believe, but it didn’t matter; he already had everything the wrong way ‘round anyway. Kirk spoke knowing full well it was not the Captaincy that was at the helm now, it was himself and this gnawing feeling of doubt, distinct avoidance of that goodbye he had foreseen. It took a lot to open his mouth and say, ‘No.’

Spock’s hand closed around his wrist under the table, over his thigh. Kirk didn’t loosen his fist, but Spock held on; urging him to divest the truth, explain the boy and the connections. Still, Kirk didn’t open his hand, but with all his soul he tried to think, _trust me, trust me. I’ll take care of us._ Could Spock possibly hear him? _Can you hear me?_

Beside him, Spock breathed in sharply. It was all over, it had been over the first time they exploded and spilt on the Vulcan sands and so it was no less over now. This had begun a long time ago. It seemed inevitable that it would muddy their orders and duties. There were suddenly words in Kirk’s head that he didn’t understand, as if a pair of gates had imploded inward and on the crushing river came this fragment, _du dungi pak-tor kanok-vei. Jim—sanu, ti’amah. Ti'amah._ His terror had seeped into Kirk and now in their conflicting hands, in the minds shooting veins of low static electricity, they were terrified together. And the fear rocking off both of them became monstrous and overwhelming.

Spock pulled his hand away at the last second.  And by now the opportunity to explain the boy had truly come and gone; now, the charge of treason had solidified around him, and the cement was drying, seaway freezing up behind him and locking him into this decision.

Kirk went on squandering their time as he answered some more detailed questions about the insurgency without mention of eugenic weapons. He told them about the Klingon spy device, Spock seconded him in a flat monotone. He watched the chronometer clock out the end as he described his proposed plan of asylum for Nessa. Spock became an ancient and unspeakable cliff-face by his side. At some point, Bones took to staring at Spock with storm drain eyes of worry, and Kirk firmly ignored them both. Tactically, Kirk had just ended his own career. He had started another countdown to when the boy would be eventually be discovered. 

‘—will my recommendation of General Order 9 be followed for Captain Nessa?’

‘We will hold her in protective custody until we can confirm the threat. The Enterprise is to rendezvous at Starbase Eleven and hand custody over to authorities there,’ Komack answered, he looked up and down his panel. ‘And as for our ruling—we’ll take a ten-minute recess and come to a consensus. I know we’ve been playing catch-up but we’re still here to make an assessment of your command abilities. Thank you all for your cooperation. Komack out.’

The screen ran to stand by. Everyone exploded, across and at one another in a flurry of motions. 

‘Aye, that isn’t a fair trial if I ever saw one,’ Scott said.

‘The Commodores hardly got a word in edgewise,’ Sulu agreed, ‘Feels like they were strong-armed into the whole thing. I’d bet Komack never got over that Altair VI diversion business.’

‘Is that whatever the hell the Admiralty is coming to now?’ McCoy finally punched out too and spun up and undid his collar in a rip by the clasp. ‘You can’t hold personal vendettas, it goes against the whole ethos of the damn job. Jim, there’s gotta be kinda some recourse.’

Kirk took a long moment to drift back, ‘Let’s hold it until they make their decision.’

‘May I have a word with you, Captain?’ Spock asked. His voice on a spike, then a curve, at his side and into it and Kirk could barely look at him. 

By way of answer, he stood up and began outward and it took his back turning for everyone else to begin speaking again. Spock followed up behind him and together they went into the corridor. The next briefing room was a few steps away and it was shockingly barren in the absence of the tension of the other room. The hull to hull was full of them; himself and Spock.

‘That was not _our_ decision,’ he said before Kirk had even turned to face him. His voice came down hard on the back of his neck, and he felt that he deserved it, but the reason he’d done it made him feel indignant all the same. 

‘No,’ he looked him in the eye. Spock had crossed his arms and he seemed to be nailed into the floor. His eyes were sharp and his brows were unfathomably sharp. He was made of a lot of straight angles and harshness and Kirk felt liable to be broken up around him and disintegrate. All he could do was reinforce himself and his final and last reserve was rank. 

‘I don’t believe it escapes you that we are now co-conspirators in treason,’ he said, enunciated, ‘Your command, everything—everything—will effectively be terminated the moment Starfleet discovers the boy. And they _will_ find him sooner or later.’

‘It was already over,’ he said and his voice came coarse and cold, ‘Komack has been gunning for it.’

‘He is not the sole decision-maker. Don’t pretend to be obtuse in light of your personal conflict with him—’

‘It’s not just him,’ he lost the last thread of volume and once the noise bloomed, it spun and he was sorry immediately, but he was throwing it all out and he was busting burning up with it, ‘I’ve heard and seen it only a handful of times, but I could see it Spock—they’re never going to judge the boy as a kid, nor you along with him.’

‘That is not predetermined.’

‘And I won’t risk it either,’ he took a step in, ‘You said you’re obligated to him, to _this_ —then I am too now. You know as well as I do that they would never be fair and impartial.’

‘Because of my heritage.’

‘Because of the boy’s,’ Kirk bit back, ‘Whatever else we think, however much of you and I is in him, it doesn’t change the fact that he is a eugenic result. And it doesn’t change that you’d be thought of as at least partially responsible through no fault of your own.’

‘I presented you the alternative, logical choice.'

‘And I’ve rejected it,’ Kirk said with flat and defeated finality, chest rising and falling. ‘It's done. It's done now.’

‘You have made a personal decision in lieu of a professional one.’

‘I’m still the Captain,’ he answered, ‘As my First Officer, you're free to mutiny if you think I made the wrong call—nothing is stopping you from going back in there and overturning my testimony. You can give them my logs if that's what you prefer.’

‘It is not a matter of preference,' he said, 'And what’s to become of our remaining time aboard the Enterprise? You have simply delayed the inevitable at an inestimable cost.’

Suddenly he couldn’t stand to see him that way, to see him, truly, as he’d seen him the first time: adversely locked out by his command, their ranks. 

He said, ‘I’ll get you to Vulcan.'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **_Du dungi pak-tor kanok-vei. Jim—sanu, ti’amah. Ti'amah_**
> 
> You will lose everything. Jim—please, let me go.
> 
> [CH16 Cover](https://vvlcant.tumblr.com/post/613090694814416896/ch16-careful-hed-been-warned-had-everyone)


	17. Vulpecula

_First Officer’s personal log, 5377.8—It has been a difficult day. The Captain’s competency hearing is in approximately twelve hours. I attempted to meditate for a time. Often, the inability to do so is some form of distraction, but I did not find that to be the case this evening. On this occasion, the reason is far less comprehensible._

_The child found first on Farius Prime is now known to share a mental link with me, as a result of being derived from my DNA. Upon seeing him aboard the Enterprise, I recognised this immediately. His presence, or rather the presence of that tenuous telepathic connection, was evident. Obvious…and incredibly present. At the time of beaming aboard, the Captain was under the duress of Nessa, Captain of the VSS Volan. As they rematerialised, it became imminent that he was in danger and that without intervention, she would kill him. It took me a further five seconds to go to his aid as I recognised the child had beamed aboard, that he was connected to me. Five…five point seven seconds._

_The VSA defines a Vulcan Parental link as, “a temporary telepathic connection which is instigated at the time of birth in an infant, almost entirely mono-directional from child to parent, to aid understanding of a child’s needs without verbal communication while such faculties develop.”. Like much else in Vulcan social sciences, beyond the academic derivations, there are not many recordings of subjective experience. Or, as with much else, it is also housed and highly protected by the libraries of the science academy._

_Since he has been on board, I have uncovered memories that I had not made. In this way, some parts of the boy’s beginnings have been presented to me as an increasingly unwilling audience._

_He began in total darkness. Gasping for air and understanding of being pushed to consciousness. Where most infants develop this over time, for him—because of his age at the time of origination—was immediate and jarring. For his primary needs, while he crawled toward some recognition of existence, experience; touch, taste, scents, and sights and bodily constitutes which are a reality for living things, a rotation of androids saw to his needs. They were similar to Harry Fenton Mudd’s androids, reference stardate log 4513.3. Human form, passable by some definition, but ultimately unalive. Their eyes could look, but would not see him. And in this way, his darkness was sustained. He hasn't seen the sky of any planet, for instance. What he understands, he understands in terms of pure mathematics, since it was almost exclusively what he was taught._

_Soon I must explain to scientists and diplomats…and strangers, what I have experienced, which is what he has experienced. It is my hope that they are receptive to the nuances. It is uncertain what they will see—and here, I’m relieved by my ignorance—I can leave the Enterprise under this guise: without speculation of what’s to come. The factors involved. I had anticipated that I would see the end of this five-year mission alongside the crew. The Captain. An imagining that I was attempting to will into existence. There are stories of Vulcan mystics that could rearrange matter by thought. I have disproven this since it seems that I will not. Or perhaps, time and again, I prove myself to be a poor countryman to the mystics._

* * *

Starbase 11 was seven lightyears short of a feasible diversion to Vulcan and for the two days that they travelled the boy remained in recreation room three. He was intermittently anxious or afraid in his strange surroundings, but it wasn’t the aloneness which was difficult for him since it was all he had ever known. In part, the thread of these feeling ran from the boy’s mind and terminated in Spock’s sternum, looped perhaps around his xiphoid process, though the transient pains came and went. 

It was a particular difficulty to sit in the labs seventy-three iterations into the Feigenbaum constant δ and suddenly feel something, anything, with the vivacity that he had felt it the first time. If the boy woke from a nightmare, Spock would stand amid a corridor with his back straight and eyes blackly aware and seem to any passerby as if he had forgotten something vital. If the boy saw a passing quasar at warp and wondered what it was and was awed by it, then midmeal Spock would lean over his plate and shut his eyes briefly and think _fascinating_ from the core of him. 

Eventually, however, the boy would have no link to break the fall of his emotions, so it would be best for him to learn to categorise and meditate through them. Spock would visit the boy once or twice a day and attempt to teach him. And it was difficult. The boy was always overjoyed by the prospect of a familiar visitor and would immediately begin to ask the question that he had gathered in himself alone. 

Sometimes one question hardly related to the next. Sometimes he hadn’t finished one when he began asking another. Spock answered patiently and concisely. A few times he used the computer to show him pictures: continents, birds, colours. The building blocks of a rumoured existence fast becoming a dream for the boy. This is a forest, this is the North Atlantic and the Thanar Sea and this is a sehlat, this is the Earth and this is Vulcan and these are planets and those are stars. This is the world, and it is ultimately unknowable. 

‘And what does that mean?’

‘To hibernate?’

‘Yes.’

‘It is the act of becoming dormant for a season, resting and sleeping.’

‘What is a season? Why?’

It proved impossible to teach the boy to meditate the way children on Vulcan were schooled to. Spock wondered if it was himself that was deficient in teaching. But it seemed just as likely that the boy was too Human and too young. And his undisciplined mind couldn’t be faulted anymore than anything else about him. It simply was. 

He still visited him and answered his questions, regardless. On the third day when he went in before alpha shift, the boy was sitting on the floor wrapped in a too-large scarf that was cornflower blue and brushing out the ends between the flats of his small palms. He looked up when Spock entered and snatched up the ends and hoisted it up over his head to show him. 

‘It’s a scarf,’ he said. ‘Do you like it?’

‘The colour is pleasing,’ Spock answered. 

‘It’s wool,’ he said importantly, ‘from sheep.’

‘Is it warm?’ he asked. 

The boy unspooled it from around his neck and held it up to him with a smile and said, ‘You can try it.’

Spock did not need to ask him where it had come from. In that crossing from entering federation space to their first stop, he had rarely seen Kirk out of shift. In and of itself it was not unusual that they would be too busy for social calls, except that nothing about their circumstances was routine beyond the surface work they did.

After the recess, the panel ruling had put the Enterprise and her Captain on a two-month probationary period, subject to review. Their directives were uncomplicated: remain within federation space, submit entry logs every twenty-four hours and undertake standard research projects and diplomatic freight activities. All explorative objectives suspended. Mentions of Farius Prime were immediately classified, as well as the Volan and her Orion casualties. Redacted bars of darkness opened up and swallowed the memory of everything that had happened in the past two months until it was as if nothing had happened. The boy alone was preserved by the lie Kirk had told. 

The Captain vanished into the monotony. Spock spent the night of the hearing in the labs and arrived at his quarters past two in the morning ship’s time. He had not been avoiding Kirk, but rather his glaring absence which would have become clear if he were to enter his adjoined room and do his small part of living without any regard for Spock. But after the second evening, Spock stopped by his quarters to pick up his personal PADD. He stood in his empty room and listened and realised Kirk wasn’t in his. Likely hadn’t been for some time. 

Spock did not go searching. They were delaying the next conversation they would have. Whatever it was. A conversation which began the second they had concluded their previous one. And all in all, McCoy had this knowing look in his eyes, but he seemed to understand better than to say anything. Spock kept his barriers jammed shut. 

What remained was the scarf; the only evidence of Kirk’s existence out of the command chair for the time being. Of Jim. Spock sat cross-legged beside the boy, and he stood up and wound the scarf around him by walking a couple of revolutions as if he was decorating a snowman. 

‘Is it warm?’ he asked. 

Spock placed his hands on his folded knees and thought about it for a moment and said, ‘Yes, but it is yours.’

He took it off and wreathed it around the boy twice and tucked the dragging corner under his chin. The boy smiled at him. 

‘How many blues are there?’

The next morning the Enterprise reached Starbase 11. Spock escorted Kirk to the brig wordlessly. Nessa was drawn from her corner by two securities, and she did not resist though she was weak with the effort of walking. She kept her eyes low while Kirk stepped to her and asked the securities to let her be easy and that restored to some modicum of her pride. Spock stood watchful by the left jamb.

‘I’m sorry,’ Kirk said, without preamble, without hesitation and any lack thereof. 

‘You already said that,’ she kept her face low.

‘I meant, I’m sorry about your ship.’

She straightened up with her hands constrained in front of her navel and looked over Kirk’s shoulder at Spock. In better light, her face was pale, almost mint and sallow and her cheekbones carved up plains of her face. He met her gaze inexpressively. Kirk followed her line of sight, and for a moment they both stood there and watched him. Spock looked down. 

‘Time to go,' Kirk said quietly. 

‘Of course. You understand,’ she seemed not to hear him.

‘Let’s go,’ Kirk said, ‘I’ll keep in contact with the Starbase and make sure you’re taken care of.’

‘If it will make you feel better.’

Kirk began to lead her out. Spock stepped aside to let the goodbye party through. 

‘Mr Spock, you have the conn while I beam down,’ he said as he passed.

In short order, Spock went back up to the bridge. On entry, he caught the tail-end of a whispered conversation between Sulu and Chekov, former to the latter: ‘—something's up, but that’s for them to know and for us to...I don’t know. I suppose we just won’t know.’

‘It is always too much mystery. I don’t—’

Sulu noticed Spock first and shrugged the shoulder by the centre-aisle in a signal to Chekov.

‘I-I don’t understand,’ Chekov continued haltingly, ‘why, Rogerson asks to switch bunks every six months.’

‘Geomancy?’ Sulu suggested weakly. 

‘Yes, geomancy, maybe,’ he said and swivelled halfway as if he had just noticed Spock and gave him a brisk nod, ‘Mr Spock.’

‘Mr Chekov,’ Spock took the command seat, ‘I believe you may find that geomancy applies only to the arrangement of furniture itself.’

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘Though initially, the concept was conceived as a form of divination in your ancient Greece,’ he continued drily. 

‘Yes, Sir,’ Chekov slunk lower in his seat. 

‘However, it does not appear relevant to your current tasks.’

‘No, Sir.’

‘Orbit report, Mr Sulu,’ he said, though he was aware they were at twenty-thousand. 

‘Twenty thousand paragee,’ Sulu straightened up.

‘Increase by five units.’

‘Yes, Sir.'

It did not take long to transfer Nessa, and they were set again and unanchored from the Starbase. Kirk came in from the turbo-lift as Chekov completed plotting a indirect course. Spock vacated his seat without turning to look at him, nothing to report, nothing to say and he did not think it would be productive to meet his eyes. Uhura cleared up the subspace, Kirk gave in the routine terms to Sulu. Their next stop was Regenter II, a scientific outpost which needed a ship to gather and peer-review the data they had been collecting for the past three years. It was positioned on the far side of the Telerite sector from Vulcan. A two-day passage at warp three.

Spock returned to his work mapping out the fuel trail orbits they had from the Paulson Nebula, to discover where they would terminate, commonalities, by stripping through the layers of eventualities. Starfleet was no doubt conducting its own reconnaissance, but by now Spock knew that there was a planet that was not Farius Prime which was the hotbed of insurgency activity, the so-called birthplace of the boy, or rather the place where he had been constructed. It was complicated work to trace the routes and calculate the units then make educated estimates; remap, revise—work enough to jam his personal tides of thought and concern to the back.

He recognised it when Kirk had left the room, standing alone and bowed by their argument. It was not himself that was indispensable to their mission, but the Commander and Science Officer. Somewhere along the way, in bed, in their sheets, with their faces jammed to one another’s necks and hands knotted they had grovelled into the grey. Both drowning now, perhaps by no fault of their own. 

Among it, he recognised that he’d gone astray in his calculations and that another weight had dropped into his consciousness. Rankled up to the crown of his head he felt a sudden crunch of lightening, bursting toward his eyes and forcing them shut. 

While he tried to perceive more detail and failed, Kirk came to him, ‘Mr Spock?’

Spock stood with his hands tied at his back and began to apologise, eyes blinkering through the next strikes, but Kirk shook his head and said, ‘Are you alright?’

‘I am fine.’

'If you need to take a break…’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘That may be prudent.’

‘Not much left to do on the bridge,’ he said, 'Go ahead.'

Spock nodded. When he looked at him, he saw that warm and silent and plaintive regard in Kirk’s eyes for a second, but then he cleared his throat.

‘Excuse me, Captain.’

Kirk nodded and turned away. Back to his seat. He did not look to him again.

Going down, Spock encountered McCoy in the corridor, falling into step beside him.

‘I thought it was about time,’ he said. Spock noticed he was holding a plain white box. He held it up and shook it as if the heavy and unequal rattling would convey what it was. 

Spock arched an eyebrow.

McCoy lowered his voice, ‘Toothpaste,’ he said, then sighed, ‘Pineapple. And that’s all the doctoring I’m set to do today. Maybe someone will get a button stuck in their nose, what d'you say?’

‘A marked boom, Doctor.’

‘I’m not set to get that lucky,’ he shrugged. ‘How many days into this probation are we? Ten? A hundred?'

‘Five days and seven hours,’ Spock said, ‘I assumed you of all people would appreciate the quietude.’

‘Certainly am,’ he said, then he curled up a loose fist and whupped his diaphragm, 'But try as I may, I just keep getting this awful calm before the storm feeling right here.’

‘Feelings make for poor evidence.’

‘Speaking of which, how’s the meditation?’

‘Teaching him standard meditation methods have not proven particularly useful.’

‘Well, I’m hardly surprised,’ McCoy said, ‘Generally speaking, kids take to meditation just as well as fish do land.’

‘Yes, thank you, Doctor.’

‘Oh, but you’ll figure it out. Or maybe he will.’

They arrived at the door, and both looked to either side for foot traffic as if they were about to cross a road. There was no one in sight. McCoy gestured for him to go ahead. 

The boy was sitting on top of the table with his legs crossed over a slanted stack of papers, pencils. He was dressed in an all-black jumpsuit and no boots and no socks. He was holding up one sheet of onion skinned, gridded engineering paper flat to the porthole glass with difficulty, making marks across the paper with a pencil, mapping further stars that would not move despite the distances being expended. 

‘Hello,’ McCoy called brightly. The boy turned, dropping the paper in surprise. It slid into the crevasse between the table and the bulkhead. He slumped where he sat and regarded them with weary diffidence. Evidently, the task he’d undertaken had proven frustrating, hence Spock getting an early warning through the link. Oncoming ill-temper. 

‘A lesson?’ he asked Spock. 

‘For a short time.’

McCoy gave him crossways look then went over and picked up the boy, lifting him to the ground and dropping several pieces of paper onto the floor around them. He said, ‘You’ll be just fine, Beau.’

The child smiled at him and Spock knew that he believed him immediately and unconditionally. McCoy turned and winked at Spock.

‘Something my mother used to call the kids in the McCoy brood. My brother and I,’ he said, ‘Anyway, it’s a damn sight better than a serial number.’

Then he thumbed open the box and plunked out the toothpaste tube into his other hand and showed it to the boy, ‘It’s for brushing your teeth.’

‘No,’ he muttered, examining it.

'This is one's sweet,’ he told him and tapped his nose, knowingly, ‘And Nurse Chapel will be by to make sure.’

He left shortly after handing it to him, nodding a vote of confidence at Spock as he went. The boy stood staring at it and eventually looked up at him for consolidation of the facts.

‘It will taste agreeable,’ he assured him, ‘Do you find the name acceptable?’

‘Beau?’

‘Yes.’

‘Beau. I don’t know any.’

‘There are many,’ Spock approached and started picking up the loose and scattered sheets. The boy crouched beside him and helped, handing him a couple of loose leaves. Spock thanked him and took a seat at the desk and examined the sheets and sheets of paper scribbled on by the twelve-pack of coloured pencils which had been among the first things McCoy brought to occupy the boy’s time. 

In short order recreation room three had become an exhibit of wonder and a nesting den of the worries of the four people aboard who were aware of the boy; bringing him minutiae of things and a few comforts that were presupposed for children on Earth; grey felt slippers, pyjamas with brightly coloured mice on them (it had taken twenty minutes for Spock to explain why this was a motif commonly appreciated by Humans while purportedly mice were categorically vermin), and even crayons. All these things had been put into the ship’s computer and synthesised during the quartermaster’s off hours. Alongside the essentials and the three sets of jumpsuits and a pair of boots and three pairs of socks, the room had adopted the shape of a makeshift bedroom. The three chairs that had lined the walls had been transformed into a bed, two swivelled to face each other and the centre on as it had been, then rigged to remain sturdy and covered with a pillow and sheets and a blanket and footed by an additional red fleece throw. The cabinet that had held boardgames and computed hand-games had become the dresser to these things. His things. For the most part, the boy did not seem to understand the idea of material ownership.

He put down the toothpaste and looked at the sheets Spock was investigating, ‘Those are stars I’m charting.’

‘It is essential to the navigation of the ship.’

‘Yes,’ he said with a flutter of pride.

The boy pulled the papers closer with the flat of both small hands. He flipped through them, crumpling the edges carelessly to find it before pulling the bottom-most sheet out of twenty or so. 

‘Look,’ he said and fanned it as if he were operating the sail of some old ship. Spock helped him flatten it on the table.

The boy took a moment and got up onto his knees on the chair to get a better look, thinking. Spock could sense him sorting information in an attempt to explain it. What was before them, were parts of the eighty-eight modern constellations, laid out in sketches and labelled with handwriting that Spock recognised as Kirk’s. All in different colours. He must have visited him shortly before arriving at Starbase 11. 

‘I picked the colours,’ Beau said by the way. Happiness passed quickly as light over a stream in him. He went on, pointed to the far left corner, the paper was twelve by seventeen inches. ‘This is the “hunting dogs”.’

‘Chara and Afterion,’ Spock told him. ‘And this?’

‘This is Lyra,’ he said.

Spock nodded. 

‘Kirk said you have one. A Lyra,’ Beau told him, and his face was guarded and curious, ‘And you can make the sounds. Music.’

'A Vulcan lyre,' Spock nodded again, ‘yes.’

‘And this one, the fox,’ he told him, ‘Which is an Earth animal.’

He picked up another pencil he’d been holding and leaned very close to the page and pressing hard in one empty corner he began to draw, one scalene triangle. Another uneven one and two circles and a smaller triangle in the centre, ‘This is a fox.’

‘It is a…minimalistic representation.’

‘Yes,’ he said, even though Spock sensed his uncertainty.

‘It means that very few lines represent something more complicated.’

‘Like the stars.’

‘In a way.’

‘Why is everything in the sky something from Earth?’

‘Humans saw the stars and organised them into things from their world. Many constellations have a corresponding myth or story.’

‘What?’

‘Perhaps later,’ Spock said quietly. These were the stories his mother had told him since the stars of Vulcan were not Earth’s and she wanted him to have both.

Spock pulled up a fresh sheet from the pile and picked up the nearest pencil, a lead and stubbed one. A thought occurred to him, ‘Maybe this will prove to be a more accessible meditation.

‘We create three points, vertices, within a relative triangle shape. Each point is assigned two numbers, consecutively.’

The boy settled back in his seat and counted to six and Spock wrote two numbers at each point, clockwise. 

‘We begin anywhere,’ he made a small mark to the bottom left. ‘Choose a number.’

‘Three.’

Spock moved halfway from his original mark toward the vertices that read 3,4. He made another mark. ‘And so on. For as long as possible, consider a different thought.’

‘Which ones?’ he had started to swing his legs already, catching the edge of Spock’s pantleg with each swoop. Spock estimated that his attention would last approximately ten minutes before he sidetracked the exercise. 

Spock turned the page to him, ‘Whatever comes first.’

The boy put down his pencil and picked up a yellow one, ‘Fox, six,’ he moved halfway and marked, ‘Earth, two,’ halfway again, ‘Yes?’

Spock nodded, ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘Pretend that each point is the thought.’

‘But I want to keep them,’ Beau said quietly. 

‘You won't forget,’ he answered, ‘However, it will stop you from thinking of them all at the same time. It’s a method of organisation. Continue.’

‘Red, six. Blue, two. White, five.’ Room, one,’ he glanced at Spock again, and he nodded for him to continue, ‘Lyra, six. Sounds, one. Ah,’ he thought for a long moment, then frowned, ‘Voice, two. Loud, two. White, five.’

Spock’s head burned with a collapsed and serrated thought that cut in from the boy. He fought the urge to flinch or to batten down the hatch of his mental barriers, and he fought the rushing and black tide of icewater that seemed to be pouring into him boots first and filling him up and up to his throat. 

An impression of the white travel cell the boy had been found in frothed up from this coldness and overtook the present. From a vacuumed silence pitfalls of throat-raw screams and howls hurled out and there was the booming double-echo of authority over a loudspeaker bluffed off unseen heights and there were pops and screes of unseen fire. Under the narrow gap in the door a viscous fuschia oozed and a rattling snare of violence like uneven drums. Everywhere, there was a telepathic overriding sensation of the people scared and dying and moaning their last breaths with their eyes run eggy in their vacated skulls by the extreme heat of fire. 

Something barrelled into Spock’s arm. He blinked rapidly and breathed and breathed and saw the boy standing beside him clutching his elbow and shaking him with all his thin might, howling and hacking cries, tears in two streams. Spock swallowed and hushed him and the boy reached out and clambered onto his lap and with his rangy arms made a noose around his neck and hugged him tightly like a river rock in white water. Spock put the flat of his hand against his back and crown of his head and hushed him again. The boy took shelter as shelter that had not existed then.

‘It’s only a memory,’ Spock said. His voice was hollow and eyes glazed, still seeing things as the boy had. He must have spent all those hours alone, listening to the fighting on Farius Prime, the men dying, the blood oxidating; curled into the furthest corner of his cell. 

The boy’s crying subsided into hiccups. Yet, for all this, Spock did not know what to say. And he could not tell him that you could not forget memories, least of all the troubling ones. That it took years for them to fade and the reality was that they remained in essence, somewhere, in some form. 

When he moved back, his eyes were red-rimmed and wide light brown. Spock could see Jim’s eyes. Fierce anger exploded in him at the proprietors of that violence, _this_ violence, which sat in the form of a child in his arms. With Beau cradled to him, he used his other hand to pull forward the sheet and pick up a pencil. Overriding the smattering of marks, he clearly and carefully drew another constellation. 

‘This is Ursa Minor,’ he said softly, ‘The ‘lesser bear’, another Earth creature, astoundingly similar to the Vulcan sehlat.

‘And here,’ he drew an outline, looped wide around the middle star, ‘is Beta Ursae Minor. There are five planets which orbit it, but only two can be visited on foot. One, without breathing apparatus. Since air everywhere is not the same. It is named Kochab III.

‘There are no people yet,’ Spock said, ‘It has many deserts, all with green sand. In the early morning there, there are microscopic creatures that light the fabric of the sky orange. They may be people one day. But they would appear different from us, but we could contact them. Learn from them.’

‘How will there be people?’ 

‘Over millions of years, living organisms evolve to survive their habitats. Over many generations.’

The boy sniffed, drawing the back of his hand under his nose. He smelled like crayons, gouged and brightly coloured bits were trapped under his fingernails.

* * *

The primary goal of the Argenter II expedition was a series of complex volcanic geological studies spanning ten years in total. Afterwards, the planet would be left to develop on its own terms, to gestate whatever it might bring forward. It was a small body which in their viewscreen appeared mint-green and black-speckled. Class M, temperate, with few animals and hundreds of insectile creatures. No predators, no seas, but vast stretches of marshland and magma runoff. 

On the first trip down, the transporter room was at capacity with five blues and two golds carrying data packets. Spock arrived separately and took his place on the transporter beside Kirk with a nod while they waited for Ensign Chen to corroborate the beam-down coordinates with the expedition. They waited. Loose conversation flowed up around them between the crew and with the noise, Spock became exceptionally aware of Kirk’s hand at his side switching in one-four patterns from tapping his forefinger to his thumb from his fore-finger to his little finger, each twice and then back. It was an old habit not from anxiety but impatience. And he knew this not because his mind had opened but because he knew him. Knew these things from the heart. 

Some more minutes carved by and Chen prodded the other side and they asked them to ‘please standby for a little longer, our meeting will be over very soon.’

Spock pulled up the PADD he had been packing under one arm. He began making a note to double-check the crystallisation processes in relation to volcanic cooling factors in the presence of heightened noble gases. Midway through the sentence, his stylus began to corrupt the lettering and became inactive. He tapped it against the back of his wrist, but then it well and truly gave up. 

Kirk moved. He stepped down the steps in quick strides and stood opposite the console. 

‘Ever been held up this long, Chen?’ he asked the Ensign, getting up on his toes and giving the panel a quick once over.

‘No, Sir,’ she said with a long-suffering smile. 

Kirk pointed at something and was preoccupied when he answered, ‘Things move a little more slowly here. May I borrow this?’ 

She picked it up and handed it off to him, and he thanked her. As he turned to come back Spock averted his gaze to his PADD, the neat and forty-five degree slanted capitals of his own handwriting hanging at … _compound processes—_

‘Mr Spock,’ Kirk said, and his voice was almost lost in the gurgling of conversation that had naturally crescendoed, ‘Spock.’

He looked up at him. Kirk met his eyes fully, turned toward him. His shoulders were soft, hair a little longer still and making toward dark curves behind his round ears, flushed. He stood in contrapposto, hips slanted. He reached out, and offered him a new stylus, extending it across the short distance between them; a rechargeable, tritanium olive branch. Spock accepted it from him, and in doing so, his fingers brushed over Kirk’s. 

‘Thank you.’

The communication came in. In all of two minutes, the scene of their tentative armistice was vacated, and they were reconstituted planetside. 

On materialising, his lungs belled out with the first hit of fresh air. The newcomers took a long moment to get their bearings and Spock with them. The horizon ran in the north to the sun in such white that it seemed to feather it into the peachskin sky and make one fabric from the ground and below it were the bulbous forms of long-petrified gouts of lava in obsidian that had by the centuries become coated in perfect sheets of grey bromelain matter that was as alive as hair on an old head. These expanses stretched toward all sides and not just into the sun. To the far west and east there were rashes of boolean trees that were doubled by the reflections in the silk-dark.

Compounded just behind them and sitting on crumbled and shale stretch of bank were five brutalist adobe buildings softened by single-coats of whitewash. They had narrow square windows and warm yellow light poured out and sat the pink sky in a callback to some kind of sweetfruit. There was a soft wind that came up from the lava fields and ran between their knees and loped onto their shoulders. Spock glanced at Kirk and he looked back. The loose strands of hair trademarked to his right brow trembled in the breeze.

A door to the building opened and an older man emerged, Human but possibly ageless in his thin skin and with vein roped hands. As he came closer he saw that one of his eyes was milk blue and unseeing. He had a lopsided smile and long, white foreteeth. 

Kirk stepped up with a polite smile and introduced himself and shook the man’s hand. Doctor Val Tomos, their host, was the leader of the exhibition since the first finding of the planet some twenty years ago. He greeted them all by running his good eye around and nodding, going to the back of the group, then again to Spock and pausing. He raised his hand, those mildly arthritic joints and narrow wrist, and offered him a ta’al. Spock returned it. 

Soon after, the Doctor led them off the side of the adobe blocks into a swept and tamped clay courtyard to meet the rest of his crew; fifteen people in total, all Humans. The youngest geologist among them was barely seventeen. Spock grouped his officers for lab and fieldwork and the Regenter researchers split off accordingly. They were bright-eyed and detailed in their explanations, and their lab had a disorderly and homely quality. Somewhere along the way, as he was ushered inside to draw up a review roster, he split off from Kirk and for a time did not think of him. And for a time he did not think of or sense the boy thousands of miles above him either. There was empty freedom to it, but it became heavy eventually. 

Several hours later he stepped out in the dusk. Two of the teams had finished for the day and beamed up. He was at his leisure until the third completed their work. All around him the level and silty beachlike grounds lapped with shallow pools toward the lava grounds. Spock began in that general direction, but across the ways on a shale flat which rose out of the ground like a stage stood alone a caliginous figure. Spock recognised his silhouette as well as he could recognise any man’s face. He had set up a tricorder and was adjusting an optic tricorder onto it, calibrating the instrumentation which blinked like a signal from this distance.

Spock exhaled and inhaled to capacity. There was still an hour and forty-three minutes until the sunset. 

He crossed the fifty or so meters to him, making slow progress over the igneous malformations and the moss carpeting, taking care not to twist his ankles up in the ditches while his boots slicked off the shallows. The was a fresh smell of cold graphite and cool Earth mornings. Kirk heard him before he arrived and turned and watched him make the last five meters. At the edge of the shale he held out his hand and Spock stared up at it, breathing a little harder, coming up in half-opaque puffs in front of him. 

Kirk blinked and swallowed. He was about to withdraw his hand when Spock grabbed it and pulled himself up. Some of the softrock broke under his step up and Kirk caught him by the shoulder. When they stood steadily together he looked at him with a half-sad, half-surprised expression; holding his hand and checked the ways to the blocks for anyone else. It was empty. 

‘Spock,’ he murmured. He thumbed the back of his hand. 

Spock touched a palm to his cheek for a second before he disentangled their hands and stepped clear of him. He bent to the optic and looked through its lens, careful not to touch it and disrupt the controls. With the guard of the lens, he could see the outline of the white sun falling. 

Then he put three feet and four…two inches to the right and clasped his hands behind his back.

Kirk sighed and moved to the optic. 

‘Are you collating data?’ Spock asked. He looked at the top of Kirk’s head as he adjusted the settings minutely.

‘No,’ he said lightly, he pressed record. It would take approximately five minutes for the instrument to take a two hundred and eighty-degree image of the landscape. When Kirk looked at him, Spock arched a brow.

Kirk cleared his throat, ‘I said I would take holograms, and we’re in no rush.’

‘For the boy?’

He crossed his arms over his chest. He thought for a moment, then went on, ‘Another week at the latest, sooner or later we’ll have an assignment in the Vulcan sector.'

Were he less tired Spock may have found some spark of anger or bitterness to drown out in himself, and to deny it. But he recognised that inside he was as still as the marshwaters. Sinking into the sediment. As heavily and sickeningly as oil. What he desired was for Kirk to bypass that, and release them into the before of their first kiss between the orchids. Somehow only he had the power to do this. Even if Spock wanted to, there was something in him that would refuse to let go. _Ti-amah—_ he had said it because he himself could not bear to do it. 

‘And to think we may have never seen this place,’ Kirk muttered, ‘Everything leads into something else, but you never expect it, do you?’

‘I have found that to be the rule,’ Spock agreed. 

Both continued to stare ahead for fear the other one would not look back if he took the chance, ‘Please, tell me you understand, Spock.’

He shook his head softly. 

‘When the hearing began, and before it, I had every intention to report everything, turn it over. Go through with the decision we made.’

‘What is done is done.’

‘No,’ Kirk said, waving vaguely, ‘it’s not. Somewhere along the way, I realised—or maybe I had a gut feeling that this was the right thing to do.’

‘It was my expectation that we would decide together.’

‘Yes, I know,’ he said quietly, ‘It wasn’t right to follow the impulse, but the impulse was correct. Did I fool you into it, do you think?

‘Where there is no feeling—’

‘Spock,’ he turned to him quickly, and Spock looked back. Kirk’s face was set in a warning and plea twisting to one indistinct expression. 

Spock rearranged his meanings. There was no use now in an exercise of stoicism since it would just be callousness. He had no wish to hurt him. 

‘It is difficult to grasp where we stand,’ he began quietly. He turned away, cast his eyes out like a rod. ‘What is most difficult is that…the-the man I may wake up beside will not be the same man on the bridge. Cannot be, at a great personal loss. It is practicality, a byproduct of our positions aboard the ship. What I failed to consider is that you are at all times one or the other, but that the motivations are indistinct.’

‘So I can’t be both at once?’

‘Your decision at the competency hearing would negate the possibility.’

‘My reasons stand. In fact, the longer passes the more certain I am that I made the right call,’ he waved it off, stepped closer and was face to face with him. ‘You’ve seen how it’s been this past week—they took all the evidence and logged it and locked it away as if nothing ever happened.’

Spock turned to him too and met his eyes, ‘And if I were a stranger at the time? And on Farius Prime?’

‘And on Vulcan, and before that? Spock, what if I was a stranger to you when I was caught up in the Tholian's web? A stranger and a friend and a lover are all different things to a person,’ Kirk answered. 

‘Could you say with certainty that we haven’t done these things out of duty to the service?’

He blinked and shook his head softly. A wistful smile came into his face, ‘No, only you could answer that for yourself. But from this side of things…I did them, at least in part, because you’re my friend. Or I don’t know…that damn term is coming up short nowadays _._ ’

Spock knew the word. He examined his face for any trace of doubt and misgivings and found none. It was difficult not to feel it come from him in waves. And for this feeling, Spock had no word, but Kirk was heavy with the offer of it all like a river run over. 

‘It was the only thing I could do. Right by all accounts. And my feelings came into play. Even if that’s contemptible to you, it’s true.’

‘It is not,’ Spock said hastily. He shook his head, ‘Above all, it is not that.’

‘Then what?’

‘How could I hold affection in contempt?’ he muttered, the question more for his own benefit than Kirk’s.

‘I thought you might,’ he said, voice all caught up.

‘No,’ Spock whispered. ‘However, the consequences are unforeseeable, unpredictable.’

‘Whatever is going to come, it’s plotted in now,’ he smiled at him wistfully.

Spock nodded, ‘Yes, that much is certain.’

‘And I rather go through it with you beside me,’ he said, ‘I think we’d do better together.’

Spock breathed shallowly, nodding. 

Kirk smiled at him. His pure and light optimism seemed to buoy Spock up toward the cleanest of air. 

‘Yet, in any case, we must get to Vulcan soon,’ Spock told him, ‘My link to the child is unsustainable.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Attachment is…inevitable.’

Spock simply looked at him. He knew that Kirk had visited the child just as often as he had, that he’d read to him and explained in careful detail what a deck of cards were and their histories. Kirk blinked, struck. They remained standing together and stared out at the velvet dark draping up in purples. Smatterings of stars were etherised onto the horizon and doubled back on the water. The more significant threat was proving to be within them. 

After a long pause, Kirk called his name. 

Spock turned to him and was relieved to find him once again, see him wholly. He realised he had missed him dearly, even for the week.

'You’ve spent time with him, you know how his mind works…’ Kirk said. 

‘He is a child,’ he said. ‘With as much possibility of becoming violent as any child ever had.’

‘Something Nessa told me that I can’t stop thinking about…on the Volan, she asked if _I_ could kill, that if the answer was yes; then he will fulfil his purpose eventually.’

Spock swallowed and knew his own answer was an inviolable ‘yes’ that he could not change as long as he lived. He could kill, and worse yet, he was aware of the price too. The point at which his peace would run its course and the head of his ancestors would rear themselves. And now, he was staring in through to the end of the line. 

‘But I’ve said it before, we’re all killers, but I think we get to decide,’ Kirk said.

 _'_ That is all it takes,’ Spock said back to him the thing he’d said on Eminiar VII.

‘Yes,’ Kirk answered in recognition.

‘ _Nirsh fai-tor_ ,’ Spock told him, ‘But it will not be known, until it is.’

‘Surak?’ he asked, he very faintly buffetted his shoulder off Spock’s arm where they stood side by side. 

‘Sarek, incidentally,’ Spock leaned in. 

Kirk’s laugh bubbled out, in relief. A comm chirped and they both instinctively checked their own. Kirk's. 

‘Enterprise to Captain Kirk?’

‘Yes, Lieutenant Uhura?’ 

‘The last science team has just beamed up,’ she said. ‘We are ready to complete orbit procedures for the day.’

‘Very well, Mr Spock and I will be right up,’ he said, ‘We’ll just check-in with our host. Kirk out.’

He clapped the communicator shut and hashed it onto his away-belt. He smiled at Spock and touched his shoulder, running the hand to his elbow in one stroke. Spock reached at the same time and met his hand halfway. In the birth of the night, he put his first two shaking fingers against the inside of Kirk’s wrist and then his palm and his fingers for a moment. Kirk moved away first. He jumped off the short ledge and when his feet splashed the black shallows, he looked up and said, ‘Come along, Mr Spock. Let’s say goodbye.'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hoooh! Apologies for the 2-week hiatus, it just really snuck up on me.


	18. Aporia

He said, 'I’ll get you to Vulcan.’

Spock watched him leave, eyes averted and sweeping by without touch. His steps were determined. The door shut behind him. He was left alone, he asked himself if he had the resolve to overturn the testimony. Some minutes passed, several short of ten; his timing was still off. 

When he moved again he had made a choice and this choice he made in the derivation of pure logic. What was elemental to his blood, to him all. Should be. He stepped outside and pulled down the hem of his uniform, stepped over to Briefing Room 3. Exact: the panel of adjudicators came back on the screen as soon as he moved to his seat. Kirk looked at him. Spock did not look back. 

‘Well, I think we have reached a satisfactory consensus,’ Komack began, ‘I’d like to thank everyone present for being as efficient as possible—’

Spock stood up. He forced his hands to remain at his sides, but could not control them contracting into fists like dying creatures in their own right. 

‘Mr Spock?’ Komack frowned at him. ‘Is there something you would like to say.’

Somewhere, below, perhaps thousands of kilometres so; Kirk’s breath was tight in his throat. His own throat. Spock swallowed it. 

‘Yes. I would like to submit further information.’

‘This is quite unorthodox.’

‘According to Starfleet regulation, since a verdict has not been delivered yet, the session is ongoing,’ Spock intoned. 

‘Yes. But that is bearing on the thin side of technicality.’

‘Therefore,’ he reasoned, ‘Whatever is divulged must still be considered a part of the original testimony.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Admiral Kawachi frowned beside him. ‘What are you getting at, Commander Spock?’

‘Please confirm my statement.’

‘Yes. Again,’ Komack said. 

Spock looked at him, but he could not see Komack, not really. There were approximate geometric colours, breakers of wind on sand blown air. Kirk, beside him, distance growing. No method of reaching out to touch, for all their distance now was that of Earth and Vulcan. Irrevocably alien. Everyone hung on a breath. 

‘Lieutenant Uhura,’ Spock said, turning to her. ‘Please rally my personal log.’

She looked at him with large eyes, with a set mouth that was disbelieving in essence. He was so easily the other again. Uhura put in the command and the computer asked for voice recognition. 

‘Computing. Commander Spock, First Officer and Chief Science Officer. Confirm access to the personal log. Repeat code: XE4Y7.’

He did as asked, and said, ’Load entry logged 5377.8.’

‘Computing.’

Uhura nodded at him in another moment, ‘It’s queued, Sir.’

‘With the panel’s permission, I will submit it as evidence.’ 

Komack looked at him for a long beat and consulted the others silently. No objections. 

‘Very well,’ he said.

‘Please play the entry, Lieutenant.’

As his own voice filled the room, Spock took his seat. His periphery was perfectly attuned to lines that made his Captain, the colours and shapes. The matter, all his atoms, which had been arranged into his friend now seemed to be coincidental. 

_‘Often, the inability to do so is some form of distraction, but I did not find that to be the case this evening. On this occasion, the reason is far less comprehensible. The child found first on Farius Prime is now known to share a mental link with me, as a result of being derived from my DNA…’_

He went on. Spock detached from his own voice, and it became a stranger’s mouth that had spoken those words, these words. Beside him, Kirk blinked and clenched his jaw. Flawless logic, there out. Herein.

* * *

They were invited inside and set before a table on one-piece wood-carved seats by a fire at the hearth. Jim was beside him, immediately beside him. Doctor Tomos told them stories as they ate, his one blind eye firmly trained in the past. The table was laden with unfired clay pots and plates. There was a bowl of honey and hand-rolled bread come to toffy brown and berries from the colony garden. At the centre of the table was a glass jug of milk, sweating and puddling in the lulling warmth. 

The Doctor’s stories became after all murky and Spock was content to watch Jim, now and then breaking off a small piece of bread and dipping it to his plate into a shallow lake of honey. His eyes were serious and fastened to the Doctor: he could decipher the story that had become a dribble of sound to Spock. Hands sticky, he nodded at something then he brought his thumb to his mouth and sucked it and took the last piece of bread from his plate. He curled a few berries into his palm and sat there pensively, eating occasionally from the funnel of his hand.  When he finally looked at Spock his mouth moved, but no sound came. The dark in the bows of the fire licked up and around them and the cottage walls parted far enough and fanned out below and became the slats of their bed. They were in pitch black except for the lightness inside. All inside. 

Jim was somewhere in his arms and warm to him and immediate and his breathing was flush against Spock’s ear. Spock reached out to his face and down his neck to his arms and his side, purblind all along. And in this process, he discovered that his skin seemed to go on forever and Spock reached and reached and could not find his hand to hold. The only change was the heat dissipating from his flesh and returning, rises and falls, was this his back or his flank or his upper arm? In no time at all he seemed to wane into Spock’s palm and the rest of his body followed. He was warm. He was so warm again. He melted into his centre like nothing at all as if Spock’s very flesh had cannibalised his being. 

Spock clenched and unclenched his emptied hand, he touched his absence. Kissed it in the manner of a lineage of the red planet millennia gone. His hand surfed the sheet in one wave which took him to a drop-off shore: the edge, empty. He keeled to his other side and rolled up onto his elbow and interrogated his surroundings. A faint light presented itself. It came from under the door, it spilt over the first few steps and made a spectre of everything else. 

He stood up and looked for where Jim may have gone. If he had left the room he would know. The bathroom? Where? Had the bridge called? He would have heard that. 

Turning, Spock followed the laceration of reflections on the glass to his left. He extended a hand to it tenderly to inspect the wound. His fingers left long, smearing prints that stanched the injury. The cold touched him back. Reaching down, two bulbs of handles fell into his palms and Spock twisted his wrists outward pushed open the double doors. Deftly sucked into an uncured vacuum of consciousness.  He emerged over the desert which had hosted his childhood, and the stars cut open a hot dirge overhead. A ripe wind passed over him. He exhaled. _I’ll get you to Vulcan._

Mind anaesthetised, he collapsed into the wicker seat by the door and watched over the guard-rail of the terrace. He proceeded with the simplest of meditations, the first set of constant iterations, and decimated Pi until the red sun came over the distant peaks and sang on the glass in the half-buried city of Kir. The architects had made it so that half their work was subterranean, and in winter they channelled the heat downward, and in summer they pumped the coolness up. As he counted, Spock considered this feat of modern engineering. 

Reality settled, slower than before. Each time slower than the last. 

He watched the wind hiss up spindrifts of sand in the yard and move droves along. The sounds came on the hundred-fold, exponentiating to a million echoes of moving sediment. There was a hectare of land which stretched out from his terrace, the furthest point of the house. It was unfenced except for a sudden drop-off, where his ancestral land, land that he would inherit one day; ended. After that drop came the long, free and wild plateaus potted with hibernation dens of wilder sehlats; nests of rishals; and the sek root, the milk of which was twenty times as potent as Earth poppies that bled opium. He settled all these facts, known to him since his childhood, by the 428th decimal place—1. 

Spock ran the ranks of his mind and knew the boy was still asleep three rooms over since he could sense no disturbance in the link. Carefully, he steepled his hands in front of his chest, subsiding the fear that was becoming manifest. Memories and dreams all awash. More and more it appeared as if he was the sole survivor of some phantom shipwreck. Adrift amongst rotting pieces of wood of uncertain security. Reality coming apart.  He stood and went inside, shutting the terrace doors behind him. The room was in the warm light coloured by the same neutral browns and creams it had been when he had visited home nearly six years ago; white bed unmade; his suitcase packed but unclasped at its foot.

For a moment he cast around uncertainly, dividend his portion of reality for the day. Vulcan, Stardate 5376.7—yes, yes that much he had clung to through the night. Four days now since he had materialised in the sand with the boy beside him, two bedraggled nomads in spirit, one-half, one-quarter one the other. Vulcan was not home presently, but a form of internment. They were greeted by the Ambassador, three Starfleet guards, Commodore Leleck, and a VSA professor. The boy reached out and took Spock’s sleeve. No trust. The link plucked with trepidation. 

For now, Sarek’s home was the nucleus of the conditionality of existence. Since the second day, he would receive an encrypted communication regarding their assignment for the day, and would have to keep the strictest of appointments; VSA research ward by 9 AM; Starfleet Post labs by 8:30 AM—insofar, himself and the boy had been deployed to these places.  Spock cleared his throat and went into the en suite washroom. Minimalistic at all costs, a bare square sink lined with the necessities; a soap holder which was an unadorned and rectangular; a bathtub under the window which mimicked the soap holders ratio precisely; this pattern could repeat ad-infinitum from the tiles to the drain. 

He turned into the mirror and examined his own face. Could one survive looking into a mirror in a dream? He waited, again, to see if things would dissolve or if Jim would walk in from the door beside the mirror. The wind seethed against his window. No. Reality had settled, at least for now. 

Spock shaved, washed and wiped his face with a towel and dried his hands. He brushed his hair, then his teeth, he upturned his bottle of cologne onto a thumb, that dumbest of digits, and nicked himself under the chin, and the sides of the neck until the scent haloed him. 

Once he stepped back into the room, the world had rightened itself closer to a centre, but not entirely. He sat at his desk and opened the PADD. The stylus was beside it. He picked it up between forefinger and thumb and held it to the light, rolling it a half-revolution until the serial number shone up. It was his own stylus, serial R34YT. Spock made a note on the PADD with it. Messy. Beside his elbow was the hologram that had arrived the previous day. Regenter II. An hour and forty-three-minute recording of a sunset, two-hundred and eighty-degree field of vision. The lynchpin that was holding the delicate connective tissue of memory and dream and imagination in this instance became clearer. 

When it began, he had been on Farius Prime; the transporter room; the sickbay; in his quarters; on the bridge. Initially, he had recognised it as amnesia, but now it was becoming clear the problem was not so simple. The further he went, the clearer it became that whatever else the link had done it had also perforated through the layers of discipline he had spent years building. Dreaming was markedly Human because it was a subconscious tool to organise the mind. In an attuned, clock-working Vulcan mind it was unnecessary, so Vulcans as a rule rarely dreamed. Or if they did, they worked not to or dismembered it. The fascination with nurturing and interpreting dreams was, in the end, a particularly Human endeavour. 

Now. Now: in an attempt to resolve these vast tracts of tension across events, his mind had begun to fuse the joints. He made a note: _En route to Starbase 11, where Captain Nessa of the VSS Volan was deposited as a matter of urgency. Further two days to Vulcan to deposit the boy and I. Roundabout plot toward Regenter II; the Enterprise’s first assignment in Federation space in a year._

The raw facts did not, in essence, confirm what he needed to know most. He clenched the stylus in his palm, the tightly, whitened flesh. Their goodbye, the real one, had been barred by the ersatz sunset talk in Regenter II. 

And if he was to interpret his sleep time talk with Jim on Regenter II, what would it mean? Yes, Spock regretted their present course, but he was aware that he would have regretted it the other way too. It came down to a division of fault. Already, the specifics were liquidating. He knew that in effect, he _had_ held Kirk’s change of plans in contempt at the beginning, had battened down the hatches of Vulcanism and control. The circumstances of the boy, of his relationship with Jim, had been sloughing him of his Vulcan half, so overturning the testimony hadn’t been a simple matter of duty. It was proof of logic, proof of himself not yet dissolved in his Human side. 

He paused and looked at the bare wall under the window’s edge. There was a scuff of some long-forgotten incident. A comet. If Jim had acted out of fear in trying to obscure the boy: fear of the future, or losing control. Of risk — then, Spock saw, that he had himself acted out of panic too. A panic which had driven him many times in his life into the sourest irony: the need to be more Vulcan.

They had chosen different paths to the same end. If Spock had succeeded in landing himself and the boy on Vulcan, it was not a testament to his resolve. It was just the side the Starfleet gavel fell. Their freedom to this choice was elusive after a point since even if Kirk had managed to buy time, it would have run out. In the process, the only thing that seemed to have suffered was themselves. 

And he remembered Kirk’s face in the light, his body and his hands—his hand, Spock knew its measurement against his own. Palm to palm. 

Scotty had been on the transporter console, drawn in and looking downward. He’d had almost no reaction to the revelation of the boy, professionally. And Kirk saw Spock and the boy onto the console, corridors on lockdown while the child was transferred. They had ten minutes for beam-down and turn over, the strictest of security seals. Command crew were naturally bound by iron-clad confidentiality. 

Kirk stood beside him on free-ground and looked at him, and glanced at the boy on the next pad. 

‘Spock,’ his voice was quiet, croaking. He cleared his throat and said, ‘Mr Spock, be careful.’

‘I always endeavour to be,’ he answered. 

Kirk nodded and held out a hand, it was trembling. Spock took it more to steady it than to shake it. It was an abominable thing to be the reason the steadiest hands in the world shook. It filled Spock with an inch of self-loathing. Held on, held tight. Yes— _the Captain and I said goodbye at approximately 1700 hours—_ he made a note of it. 

‘I will subspace.’

Spock nodded. They let go at the same time. Kirk went over to the boy, kneeled to even their eyes. 

‘Goodbye.’

‘Goodbye,’ the boy nodded apprehensively. Kirk cuffed the back of his head gently.

‘The holograms of shore-stops—Regenter II is first—I’ll send them like I said.’

The boy smiled at him, glanced at Spock to say, _look!_

Kirk pivoted down the stairs and took the centre of the room, contrapposto, hips slanted. Eyes full of that warm and silent and plaintive regard on Spock. 

Spock did not trust his own hand to hold up the ta’al. 

_Come along, Mr Spock. Let’s say goodbye._

Now, Spock sat back and looked at the pitiful smattering of notes; what he had come to, forced to write down bare facts to have simple command of his own memories. Worse than that, dreams. Pi was not going to save him, nor Feigenbaum, nor Mandelbrot, no amount of counting the imaginary number _i_ would create order in this knotted chaos. His drowning mind. 

He committed the notes to the computer memory banks and decided that for now, it had to be enough. Means to an end, the beginning of an internal humiliation of his mind gently falling apart. A humiliation he had to date shared with no one. Not even Kirk. 

Restarting, with a put upon and belaboured locomotion, he began to dress. Layers and layers of shirt material unfamiliar to his skin, un-blue. Wintering in Vulcan under desolate circumstances consisted of a long-sleeve thermal undershirt, a high-necked black sweater, a sleeved robe which came to his mid-thigh and clasped over the left shoulder. He opened his suitcase to search for a pair of socks and the sheets of engineering paper the boy had insisted on bringing along lay overtop of a modest selection of clothes. Spock kneeled beside the suitcase with every intention of putting aside the sheets, but he paused and stared at them instead; constellations by Kirk’s hand; an aborted Sierpinski’s triangle which had been Spock’s final, disastrous attempt to teach the boy meditation. 

The triangle spangled fox in the corner and the crude one imitating it in red. It occurred to him that the strength of reality now lay in the physical collection of things. 

At the bottom corner, he found a rolled pair of socks and put the drawings back where he found them. He took his coat from the hanger, carrying it from the room with him over one arm and picked up the hologram on his way out. The corridors were shallow with the wan light and he stepped lightly.

In the dining room, Sarek was seated at the head of the table, tea steaming up in front of him. 

‘Good morning,’ Sarek said. When he glanced up there was a trim of disruption from him. Spock realised he had not constituted his mental shields yet. 

‘Good morning.’

Spock lay his coat on the back of a seat, placed the hologram on top of the table and went into the kitchen. As he took the teapot, a cup, a saucer and poured, trimmed two sprigs of mint from the windowsill garden of his mother’s reserve, and added it to the steaming ginger-red liquid; he replaced his shields with stern efficiency. It was old practice, but he had the sudden sensation of braces clamped on the hinges of his joints. 

He took a seat with his back to the garden window. Garden was a generous term. There were no more than a few hardy and a faint-rooted smattering of trembling reeds, a stone path half-buried by the gusts coming in earnest from the east. Faintly, with consternation, he thought of his orchids aboard the Enterprise. But he knew, somehow, that Kirk would not let them die. 

‘Your mother will return tomorrow,’ Sarek said without looking up, ‘I received her subspace communication last night.’

Spock looked up at him. He put his hands together in front of him, cordoning off the cup of tea. The steam came up under his face, warming him to the realisation that he had been cold. In fact, he recognised that he had been cold since arriving on Vulcan. Bodily controls break-mirroring the mind, he had to put forward the hypothesis if he was subtly being destroyed in other ways. 

Sarek went on, ’There is the concern that she may be distressed about your current condition.’

‘The link is not an affliction. However, I will follow your lead.’

‘No?’ Sarek muttered, he put aside his PADD. ‘Do you deny that it has impacted you?’

‘Semantics may be significant in this case.’

‘I agree,’ Sarek said, ‘But any unintentional link is by nature malignant.’

Spock acquiesced with a nod. 

Sarek went on, ‘If you are to be on Vulcan for some time, there is no way to keep your presence hidden from her. As Ambassador, I have vouched for your presence here, and only here.’

‘The alternative?’

‘You understand,’ Sarek said. ‘ _Vuhlkansu trahoka t’kashkau-tal eh naf-tor t’krusat na’ ish veh.’_

‘What is your solution?’ he asked, forgoing that, it was unlikely that Sarek hadn’t thought this through to every iota. 

‘It is my wish to protect her from hardship, but there’s nothing to be done,’ he said. ‘She will be appraised of the situation.’

Spock nodded curtly. He sipped his tea slowly. Time and again, the woman who had relocated to Vulcan, raised a Vulcan son and become entrenched in the desert, was fiercer than either of them. That much was proven. 

‘Have you spoken to Kirk?’ 

He froze with the cup halfway down, he lowered it to the saucer by way of inquiry. 

‘Regarding the child,’ Sarek added, although Spock’s reaction must have already told him something, ‘What was his perspective? After all, it concerns him too.’

‘We have agreed to treat the situation on the basis of practicality,’ Spock said calmly, having collected himself. 

‘And yet, the boy speaks fondly of him.’

‘Yes,’ he said and offered nothing else. This was a question he’d been turning over himself. 

‘Attachment would be fatal, Spock,’ Sarek went on. ‘A particular taming of the soul.’

This too, in short, had been the crux of the problem his mind had been attempting to sputter solutions too, waking and sleeping, every moment Bodache-guarded dream or long-wound categorisation: he is not a weapon, but he is also not a child; I have forgiven you to forgive me; what have we done to each other in the name of love? What else was there to do? 

Spock swallowed and curled his hands together, clenching his teeth into a steel trap of reticence. Perhaps Sarek understood something of this, more than Spock cared for him to. 

He thought about all this and asked, ‘Is that the nature of a parental link?’

‘What is?’

‘Subjugation?’ he asked, ‘There are no subjective studies.’

‘No, there would be few such published records,’ Sarek nodded, ‘It is a significant and singular experience. However, importantly, it is prepared for before a child is born. There are rites of meditation, days in the temple, to organise and reconcile a new mind.’

Sarek nodded and leaned onto his elbows, he placed every finger-tip to the equal opposite, ‘ _Hatanik_ _Zek._ One must restructure their own understanding of existence, the progression of generations—however, because of the eugenic involvement, you do not have this luxury or the possibility of acceptance. It will be up to the Healers to consider disentanglement of the bond, purposefully.’

‘And this is not done?’

‘No, it is not done.’

Spock blinked. Belligerently, he considered that until the Enterprise swung around Psi 2000 and travelled back in time, that had not been done either. Every advancement from Vulcan to Orion to Earth was built on the back of an impossibility. Still, impossible was itself a potential outcome. A certain amount of blind chance was involved. 

‘Spock, you should prepare yourself for the probability that if the link must be severed by any means, your survival will take precedence,’ he said. 

‘He is not entirely Vulcan.’

‘He is not Vulcan at all,’ Sarek said sharply. ‘Nor is he Human. Specimens of research are not assigned a creed and make no mistake, that _is_ his nature. It is irrelevant if he is a success or failure by their metric or the purpose they—this insurgency—had in mind, it simply matters that he _is_. Don’t be so blindsided by genetic relatability, Narcissus would not survive such an ordeal.’

Spock diverted his gaze to the table. No, but that was precisely the issue. He did not see himself in the child. If only it were that simple, untangled. As always, the recurring problem in his life was that other half. Some other half. 

‘It is clear,’ he said. ‘In any case, it may be premature to assume what is and isn’t possible.’

Sarek nodded tightly, ‘Of course. Are you returning to the Starfleet Post today?’

‘Yes,’ he answered.

‘Likewise, the Farius Prime reconnaissance expeditions have moved forward.’

‘Could the unrest be resolved through diplomatic means?’

‘An attempt will be made.’ 

It did not sound promising. Spock resolved to continue the mapping work he had begun on the Enterprise that evening, or this malaise was bound to rot to vulnerability, to defeat. And that which was worse of all for him, uselessness. 

Soon after, Sarek left the table for his day, and Spock did not inquire to its nature; partially because it was likely classified, and because presently, with the suspension of his rank, he was temporarily a civilian and that would diminish whatever else he could tell him. And most importantly, the Ambassador was imminently disinclined to nepotism. In fact, Spock had observed through the years, he had occasion to motion in disadvantage of it to affirm its denial. Old troubles. Troubles not worth the thought now; Spock’s filtered blood transfused to his father had pushed out the attrition under the bridge enough to keep it workable, moving. 

His appetite proved to be unfit to even the tea in front him until it was cold and he drank out of obligation to the water, not the leaves. Midmorning approaching, he washed the cup and turned to go and ready the boy, but he had already stepped into the hall and was standing with his face nearly pressed into the glass. 

‘Beau?’ Spock called. 

He turned and looked at him, he was wearing his blue scarf, and again the second set of white jumpsuits from the Enterprise synthesiser. When they beamed down, there had been a box of the necessities brought along — and the crayons because of determined protest. The scarf had not been amongst those items since he stubbornly kept it around his neck at all times. Unforeseen clemency of a Vulcan winter. 

‘Are you hungry?’ 

‘Yes,’ he nodded and turned back to the window while Spock synthesised some nutrition blocks. So far, the boy refused to eat anything else, strictly predisposed to the food he’d been brought up with. 

Spock asked him to the table as he set down the plate and a fork beside it. The boy came over after a prolonged, distracted moment and sat down. He had been calmer since beaming down to Vulcan and if there were windows, then he was mesmerised by all views. Sky, sand and the intermediate nothing, even. Red sun rising, red sun setting. A million firsts had come into his life and he was aglow with seeing, being. 

While he ate, Spock returned to his room for his PADD. He took Sarek's vacated seat when he came back. Beau was eating in too-large bites, fork untouched beside his elbow. He was a little short for the tabletop, levelled high with his chest. Spock reached over and unwound the scarf from him and put it on the far side so it wouldn’t get soiled. He was unfamiliar with the processes of washing wool without shrinkage. 

‘This arrived last night,’ Spock said, sliding the hologram disk over.

He looked at it cautiously and began reaching out, Spock put a napkin in his hand before he touched it. He messily wiped his hands with an effaced look and splayed them for a hasty inspection before picking it up.

‘What is it?’

‘It is a hologram of Regenter II.’

He smiled, ‘It’s been years. And years.’

‘Four days and fifteen hours.’

He did not yet grasp the meaning of a year, let alone on which planet. That ephemeral and nearly meaningful function of metered time. Or perhaps that was how he saw time for now. Years of experiences packed into minutes: that was another root of the exhaustion Spock faced, going through the emotive expression of an entire world blooming around him while trying to cling to everything he himself knew. His own expressions. Simply put, the boy was torrential rain. Capacity was finite. 

‘Can I see it?’ he asked. 

‘Later,’ Spock told him. 

‘Have you seen it?’

‘Yes,’ he said softly.

‘So, after?’

‘After,’ Spock confirmed, he took the disk from him. He picked up the fork and inclined it to him handle-first. Beau wrinkled his nose, but accepted it and clawed a yellow block apart. 

Spock opened his personal messages for the day and scrolled through while the boy finished eating, the fork against the plate-floor now and then. He had received a message from Kirk. He paused and opened it. 

_— Ashayam Spock,_

_The ship will be en route to the Luyten system tomorrow. At 1800, Vulcan time, our personal subspace audio-visuals will be in range for a period of thirty minutes. I’ll wait for you._

_Sent: 2154 Ship’s Time, USS Enterprise. Captain James T. Kirk._

Spock thought again; _forgive me to forgive you_. He touched the scarf laid on the table and felt the material between his forefinger and thumb, the delicate fibres and weft, a blue so blue it was flaming. He reread his message. 

‘What is it?’ Beau asked.

‘Nothing,’ he told him quietly. ‘Finish your breakfast, we should not be late.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **_Vuhlkansu trahoka t’kashkau-tal eh naf-tor t’krusat na’ ish veh._**  
>  _Vulcan Institute of Psychiatry and Links_ has a section for this.
> 
> AAHH, yes hi. I'm going to go ahead and do another AAAHHHH cause this wip is @ing me.  
> Just want to point out the chapter title was inherited from Sufjan's new album. Also, thanks to people over on the blog-side who dropped some lines about Sarek 🙌  
> The fic mix I mentioned a few chapters in is also up [on Spotify here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6ldTodelwCYH5bsBUKPK7c?si=q1ezpYCbTX2SKFkE77x2bw) for anyone who is interested


	19. Solaris

The flat and straight blacktop bisected the desert floor, stripping back the four, fifty-two kilometres to Kir beneath the craft. While the autopilot mechanically adjusted the control yoke, Spock continued plotting the freight coordinates to and from Farius Prime on his PADD. It was finical and endless work and all the while, one part of his mind was dedicated to the Enterprise now floating out of hand between routine missions and one part the battering drums of conflict. Now, surely raging, now, certainly a threat. He was resolute that if he could find the overarching pattern, then he would find the insurgency’s base and assess and intervene. And still, he was also aware that the dedicated flicks of his stylus were strokes in an ocean.

Sarek’s Ambassadorial entitlement had granted them access to the hovercraft. Security reasons, in his terms. _You are u_ _nlikely to be targeted, but we must exercise appropriate caution._ That first late evening in his study, he had opened his top drawer and pulled out a Han-Shir phaser and put it on the table before sliding it toward Spock. _It is to be kept in the hovercraft_ : now, it occasionally rattled where it lived in the central compartment, percussing his eyes to the horizon. Beside him, the child sat quietly in the passenger seat with his knees wedged up to his chest. He looked everywhere with intent fascination; the pink salt pan to the south and the graduating sweeps of alluvial fans crawling away from the mountains beneath the northward sun, head swivelling to patches of deep-rooted vegetation and the rare and instantaneous lope of some creature or other. There were no homes in this stretch of land, no passing vehicles. 

Awe, what was awe? It was rooted in fear; and in Vulcan, _teshan_. Spock drew it back to linguistics, that transitory branch of science. He reached for empirical data where he could to find a foothold and climb out of disorder—pragmatics, morphology, phonetics— _awe,_ it was almost a sigh. He slipped. He thought, _tesha_ — the verb, for something which seemed to have no beginning and no end. Semantics. And he slipped again. 

He stared as the boy divined his homeworld. Spock was deeply aware of his own debilitation; he had come to Vulcan as the child’s proxy, but there was no certainty in the choice—what if there was a moment, a single action as simple as operating the transporter which could alter the fate of the Enterprise?  In a cave-mouth pass, everything fell into a black cupful of shade, and he saw his reflection in the glass: dark eyes and drawn mouth and something in them on its last leg. Ears so sharp and dreadfully alien. He glanced at the boy. He had raised a hand to his own ear as if to test the alacrity of a blade. Blunted. The previous night a sandstorm had passed and rearranged dune formations that marked the next leg of their passage. The boy asked if they had come a different way. No, it is the same road, Spock said.

‘Are we going to the city?’ he asked.

Spock nodded, he indicated the navigation screen in the central panel, ‘Our destination is the same.’

The boy fell mute and let his forehead tip forward with a dull thunk against the window. His agitation mounted. For the first two days the Doctors had extricated biological data—blood samples, hair, bone marrow, spinal fluid, height, weight, then tested a rubber hammer in the soft junctions of his knees and elbows, shafts of light in his corneas, the back of his throat, _say ah_ —one Starfleet Doctor had told him. For what, the boy asked. 

The Vulcan Doctor had been less lenient the previous day— _do not move_ —as a scanner recorded every layer in his body. _I must restart the procedure._

The boy had shot up on the examination table in a grey-blue gown, hair tossed, and eyes wild. He looked like a weary and lost and ancient Terran angel; pure myth. He looked at Spock sitting in the corner of the room against the white. All-white walls and tall windows, endless, pouring light which spliced on silver instruments.

The Vulcan Doctor, T’Rell, gave Spock a narrowed look. Their time was slated to the minute and the collection of the data had to be thoroughly precise, first, for Starfleet records and then the VSA’s. Where eugenics was concerned, there was a lack of working trust in research data between the Human and Vulcan scientists.

‘Lay still,’ Spock told him, ‘I will be here.’

‘Okay,’ but he did not lay back down. ‘Promise?’ 

‘Yes,’ it was an easy promise to keep. He wondered who had taught the child what promises were and knew the answer by heart. He added, ‘It will not hurt.’

‘Okay,’ he sucked in a breath and lay back down.

His thin chest pulsed with harried breaths and his panic entered Spock’s mind by that metronome.

Now with fifty kilometres to Kir, he said, ‘I don’t want to go,’ 

‘We must,’ Spock answered. 

Kir peaked at them from between the canyons in the windshield. It was made of half-dome arches of tinted glass, curving inward to crevasses running several miles deep. Marked by a difference in size and placement, the half-moons and crescents of buildings were as high as they were buried, including public offices, schools and hospitals. Exacting and well-allotted archways ran in superseded vines from one walkway to the other, public transit ran deep underground—a coordinated system of lift shafts that kept infrastructure optimal at all times. Vulcan cities moved like oil in water. The crags of mountains and rock platforms had long ago informed the blocks of architecture, and so every block was pre mandated by the organic world.

There were only seven roads throughout Kir, all leading to a one-levelled parking space with fifty allotments. Often several were in use by council members; transport of dignitaries, political or diplomatic grandeur. 

As they arrived, they were introduced by the breath of road dust overtop. Their journey had sheeted the entire craft, windows half-opaque. 

Spock turned off the engine and the vehicle powered down onto the ionised park rails. He withdrew the key and released the doors, swinging outward. He packed his PADD into his satchel and stepped out, drawing on his coat before taking the strap over one shoulder. The boy spent an extended moment unbuckling his seatbelt and climbing out, then rounded the front while running a finger on the hood, leaving patterns and waves—a morse-code of childish ennui. 

‘Careful,’ Spock said, and the boy pulled his hand to his side as the doors lowered shut. 

‘Today will be better,’ Spock said and offered him a hand in reassurance. 

‘Maybe,’ the boy took it; there was a fifteen-minute walk through the fourth quarter to Starfleet Post. 

They took the first lift to the upper-level walkway. They were sunlit and warmed as they joined others behind their brisk paces and careful, polite inclines of heads and occasional stoppages bracketed by ta’als. There was the low, careful hum of conversation and the smell of eateries along the way; root-rich foods and the aroma of spices and starchy sweetness and the near-mechanically polite tinkles of cutlery. The fulgent memories of Spock’s own childhood sparked like wildfire.

They went up a ramp inclined and forking east, Vulcan script ran on ribbons of alternating electronic signals to convey direction, and the boy temporarily shed his nerves. He intently watched people travelling in the opposite direction; a pair of men with studied and tailored grey robes; rushes of young workers and college students; an elder educator leading a two-file group of children perhaps only two years the boy’s senior. They moved with a bobbing disorder, their voices at times escaping the quietude reserved for polite, external conversation. Beau observed them passing in their mauve uniforms. A hush fell in their ranks when they noticed him too; an unknowable stranger, who resembled them, but was not one of them. The agitation skittered back in.

Spock nodded west toward the diverging ramp to distract him; it let onward to a high-held glass structure containing a multitude of non-native and carefully kept flora. There was a butterfly house in the central section, humidified and used for bio-organic studies conducted by the VSA. The light refracted and shone a hundred-fold through it like a beacon. It came over the rails of all the walkway bridges.

As it had been every day, the boy stopped and went onto his toes near the barrier to get a better look. 

‘ _Markau tar-kur_ ,’ he said, looking at Spock for confirmation.

‘ _Markau yar-kur_ ,’ he corrected.

‘Greenhouse,’ he repeated and smiled—which was duly noted by a couple of passersby. ‘Could we go today?’

‘Perhaps later,’ Spock answered, ‘After.’

‘Later for everything,’ his smile was pilfered. 

He followed Spock, taking his coat-sleeve and dragging for a moment.

And Spock knew his look. Recognised it a hundred-fold from materialising in some unknown world under a new light; sun or star or synthetic. Like all things, significant and inane, his reaction was to tell him about it—a habit which had evolved from a command team practicality into a personal indulgence. But what were the words to say: I witnessed the boy seeing Vulcan, and I saw it anew also, and somehow—you saw it too. No, these words could never find a voice. His voice could not find them—or the notion was too large. One on behalf of the other despite him missing. He adjusted his satchel on his shoulder, and they went on, crossing an ebbing intersection up to the three-storied glass structure of Starfleet Post. 

The logo was constructed over the wide entrance in nickel-plated silver and was buffed and shining too-bright. There were sets of seats in the immediate foyer; there were ranks of Federation members. Groups of Humans in Vulcan clothes bearing Vulcan expressions holding court. 

In the vaulted entrance ceiling, there was a sculpture of the Vulcan solar system and Earth’s; entangled, enmassed in a series of spinning planets suspended by gravitational sub-actuation. They moved per present reality. The boy stopped and titled his head straight back and spun halfway with the rotation of Jupiter’s axis overhead. Commodore Leleck and Doctor T’Rell were waiting for them by the reception. Spock did not hurry the boy. He let him look for a while longer. 

He very gradually twisted around the axis like a freediving leaf, wind-caught. When he reached Pluto, he looked back down and saw the waiting faces. By now he knew Leleck and T’Rell on sight. 

‘Time to go?’

‘Yes.’

‘Okay.’

They greeted Spock sparsely and ignored the boy. There was tension between the Vulcan and Human, and the friction of cross-checking facts but not an open dispute. As they were led to the lift and down five floors the temperature rose minutely.

‘The child’s mind will be evaluated today,’ Doctor T’Rell told him as the floors lit up in descending order, ‘As well as yourself. Commodore Leleck and I will be corroborating the medical reports.’

‘We would like to get you to Earth as soon as possible,’ Leleck added. ‘Starfleet HQ’s facilities are more comprehensible in dealing with eugenic issues.’

‘Yes,’ T’Rell said, ‘No doubt Earth’s facilities built to overcome your third eugenic world war have more comprehensive data.’

‘What I meant was that our Doctors are further along in their methodologies of dealing with such issues,’ Leleck’s eyes cut sideways to her. ‘As is our ruling body.’

‘No doubt, superior obstacles have led to more efficient solutions.’

Leleck’s jaw clenched. He had a smell like wet granite and detergent, and T’Rell had no scent at all. In the confined lift, the air and atmosphere were heavy.

Spock placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder, he was silent, but he understood the general intent. He knew that they were discussing him, dissecting him.

T’Rell’s eyes shot to Spock’s hand. Her starched and hollow necked white coat held her like a half-shell, her economical and short hair brought out the angular lines of her features. Her light blue eyes crossed his, and they were disapproving or worse.

‘In any case,’ Leleck said, ‘I think HQ would prefer you transferred soon for security reasons. I’ll brief you afterwards.’

‘Certainly,’ Spock intoned. 

The doors opened onto their floor, and they exited into a foyer. In the corners, there were mirrors which drew down natural light from the carefully appointed shafts opening out and sprung it a thousand-fold. Their footsteps clipped on the cinereal stones in triangular shapes and arranged cut to cut with no grout but empty and dark seams. The boy occupied himself by stepping in the centre of all the tiles while keeping pace, counting in his mind.

‘I’ll leave you here for now. Good luck, Mr Spock,’ Leleck stopped short of the middle of the room and nodded briskly at him before departing to one of three corridors leading away. 

‘T’Pau shall be instigating the search,’ T’Rell said in Vulcan, plain central city accent, and with a stiff board hand out at a ninety-degree elbow indicating the first corridor. ‘She awaits you in room 403.’

‘Very well,’ Spock said. 

‘No doubt she will be able to uncover the nature of the link,’ she added, looking at the boy again. He shied closer by Spock’s leg and held onto his satchel’s edge.

‘Has your medical research been particularly deficient?’ 

‘The mind is the body,’ she answered in a cold, Surakian axiom.

Spock turned toward the corridor without another word, and the boy followed in two-step for each of his long strides.

‘Do not look back,’ Spock told him, patting his back momentarily. 

‘Okay,’ he kept looking ahead and went on in a tinny, wavering voice, ‘Did I do something?’

Spock said nothing until they were inside the entrance of the corridor, out of the Doctor’s view. He kneeled in front of him, ‘No,’ he said firmly. 

‘What’s it called?’

‘What is?’

‘I don’t know,’ he murmured and as if in a natural answer, Spock was imbued with the melancholy in him. There was also a back-note of otherness which had no definable term—a sense of lacking and malformation which he recognised from his own childhood. 

‘It is sadness,’ Spock said quietly. ‘But it is temporary. They simply do not understand you.’

‘Understand what?’ a few tears breached his cheeks in rapid succession. 

Spock did not have an apt answer. Worse yet, he was suddenly as ineffectual in helping the boy as he had been in helping himself that forever-ago. 

‘Nothing.’ 

‘What does temporary mean?’

‘It will not last long,’ Spock brushed his hair from his brow and thumbed dry the tears. He waited for him to calm down. ‘Are you ready?’

He nodded. Spock straightened up, and they went on, and the child grabbed his arm with both of his again.

The corridor was well lit, and there were green security panels at several junctions, office doors with Vulcan scripted in braille lettering on the jambs, indicating unfamiliar names in distinct professions. There was the equivalent in standard perpendicular to them. 

At the very left-end, there was a single door marked _403: General Visitation Room_. The opaqued glass slid away to admit them on approach. It was disorienting to step inside; surrounding the square centre of the room was a moat of shallow, overlit water. The thin and still tides refracted back a thousand-fold kaleidoscopic lighting system over the walls and slanted ceiling. It had the added function of providing a consistent circulating heating, geothermally rerouted wells.

T’Pau was seated toward the middle on a low black lounge across from another identical one. 

‘Welcome, _Spohk_ ,’ she greeted him in standard.

Her head-dress was a thousand-fold of white silked wool rising over her head in a nest, obscuring her hair and her ears. The rest of her clothes were a deep vermillion, and the seams were delicately fringed and moved with the slightest inclination of her as if she was in the process of eternal self-immolation. 

He held up the ta’al with careful timing. She returned it. 

‘Approach,’ she said, rotating her hand, curling two fingers. Her nails were long and lacquered. The orange lights over the water swam up and down the walls and captured her in a tableau. 

Spock sat across from her and put his bag down by his feet. The boy let go and sat beside him, his feet hung some inches above the ground, but he didn’t swing them.

‘We meet under strained circumstances once more,’ her dark eyes acknowledge the boy for a second.

‘Indeed.’

‘Say this,’ she said, ‘Have you made a habit of calamity, _Spohk_?’ 

He clasped his hands in his lap, ‘It has not been my intention.’

‘And yet calamity finds you?’

‘It is the nature of my occupation.’

‘Yes,’ she nodded once, ‘Sarek is a proponent of this probability.’

‘For him, it may be a concession to be proven in this regard.’

She tutted, ‘Each will travel their path.’

Her dark eyes slid to the child again. The boy was too tired by his previous outpour to be cowed. He stared back at her raptly like the unknowing and strange changeling that he was.

‘He is young,’ she said, ‘But old enough to create memories.’

‘Yes.’

‘And you know this in your mind?’ 

‘Indeed.’

‘Very well,’ she answered. ‘I must have his thoughts.’

She leaned across the short divide to the boy, and her fingers adjusted incrementally. Whenever Spock attempted melds, there was a period of reshaping to psi-points, but her practice had inclined her to sense them by observation. The boy flinched away from her at the last moment. 

‘Do not be alarmed. Stand,’ she said calmly. He consulted Spock with a glance before standing up and inching closer. Her voice drew him as if a large gravitational force was at work. On his feet, the boy was a little taller than T’Pau seated, and her age which had condensed her bones and posture was accentuated. She attached both hands onto the sides of his face and shut her eyes in concentration, expression tensing minutely. 

There were no crystalised terms, and the light playing cast the net far and wide over them. Water seethed, and in the absence of any light, it seemed to be the fabric of eternal darkness while the sound thrashed overhead against unseen edges of this world. After a time it was lulling to float in this sensation, captured, by mental faculties above his own. Weightless in salt. When Spock was conscious again, he had no recollection of closing or opening his eyes, rather that, the dark faded or perhaps the light reached out and pulled him back. T’Pau was withdrawing her hands, and the child’s face was profoundly blank as if he were shell shocked. 

T’Pau turned to Spock and studied him in silence. 

‘A moment,’ she said, and picked up her cane from the seat and laboriously went to her feet. Once she was up she moved in stately pivots to the wall intercom and summoned Doctor T’Rell. 

By the time she was seated again, the Doctor had entered the room, rounding to the boy. He was standing lax and stumped as if making a long journey back into his mind with every slow blink. Full mind melds had that potential effect, a wipeout which could last for some time. She took his hand and led him away briskly and he did not protest, following on half-slipping feet. 

The door shut behind them. Spock stared after them for a prolonged moment. 

T’Pau put her hands together in her lap and glanced toward the moat. If she were orchestrating the every minute wave, it would not seem out of place; the power contained in her mind was unsurpassed, holding everything captive, including Spock.

‘In one manner,’ she began, looking at him, ‘it is certainly simple. Yet, in another, it is unresolvable. The child does not possess a _katra._ ’

Spock blinked, ‘I fail to understand how that is possible.’

‘His essence is unknowable.’

‘If that is the case, a link cannot exist.’

‘The telepathic neurons remain, but they do not lead to a contained or ordered essence. A _katra_ is also the order by which a Vulcan is organised. He is chaos, _Spohk,_ ’ she squinted at him, with pursed lips. ‘This too, must be known to you.’

‘It was not known to me explicitly,’ he shook his head. 

‘His mind is Human,’ she said.

‘Has this weakened the link?’ he angled his head slightly to one side, frowning minutely. 

She took a long pause, ‘It is as strong as any, yet, it is discordant in return. You understand?’

‘To a degree.’

‘The effect cannot be contained,’ she said, ‘In heightened states, his mind deteriorates yours by deriving emotional control, support. Your logic, your order, your rationality are threatened if you do not persist with stronger shields. Failing this is total destruction.’

‘Could it be severed?’

‘No. It must be endured,’ she said, ‘Short of total abolition of emotion, nothing can be done.’

‘Are you referring to the process of _Kolinhar_?’ he asked. 

‘The only manner of erasing the link is to erase all else,’ she reached out swiftly. ‘Grant me your thoughts.’

Spock exhaled and brought his face closer, moving forward on his seat. Her fingers touched down on his skin lightly. Gleaning his mind for her was as simple as pouring water into a bowl. A few moments later, she pulled away, and he returned to himself and felt that the air in his lungs was foreign to him.

She concentrated within herself for a time, parsing his memories and expressions, then said, ‘The Human soul is highly rumoured, and faintly detectable. But it is still unproven. There is no Human _katra_. The Human heart is a fickle mystery.’

‘To an extent, that is true, but in my experience, it is proven. Time and time again…I have perceived it.’ 

‘And is it not anguish, _Spohk_?’ she asked in a hush. 

‘To be without it would be as calamitous. More so. With it, there is also joy, T’Pau — and affection. Yet, the absence of anguish at the expense of these things may not be survivable.’ 

‘Then, you will not undergo _Kolinhar_ because that is the cost: all emotion.’

‘No, I will not undergo it if I can help it,’ he answered, ‘If it is within my power to avoid it.’

‘You will endure your connections?’ 

He thought about it, and swallowed, nodding once, ‘It is my privilege to know the Human heart.’

‘Kirk’s?’ she asked, for she had looked into the depths of him and knew as he did. 

‘Yes.’

He lowered his head and shut his eyes and focused on the most erudite point in his own heart. Blood clot of magnitudes in his side. If he concentrated and reeled back in time, he could anticipate Jim’s hand over it like dressing over a wound. Fitted but inadequate to the pouring, and endless stream. 

There was a flipped axiom to the one T’Rell had told him: _the mind is the heart._ He went on, translating loosely the ancient words adjacent to _my mind to your mind, my thoughts to your thoughts_ to standard, ‘His heart beats the same as mine. Conceivably, mine did not beat before his.’

‘You are half-Human, but you have a _katra,_ and therefore a Vulcan heart. Human connections are ephemeral, _Spohk._ They have shorter memories. Would he make the same claim to yours?’

Spock breathed slowly, he opened his eyes, but he did not look at her. When he spoke, he had to think every syllable, every term as if relearning them, ‘I do not know.’

‘But you have faith?’

‘I have no other device for subsistence.’

‘In this manner, there is no more help I can give you. It is between you and your loyalties, wherever they lie now. But you must remember, as always, that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.’

‘Or the one,’ he met her eyes. 

‘This is often a call to sacrifice.’

‘For now, I endure.’ 

‘Yes.’ She held up the ta’al, ‘When we met last, you said you should neither live long nor prosper. Are you still insistent on this destiny?’

He returned the ta’al, ‘On the contrary, I shall try my utmost to avoid it.’

‘Rightly so,’ there was a slice of humour within her, dark eyes bright, ‘We are few whose Captains are resurrected.’

He arched a brow, and acquiesced; thought, _touché_ , as Jim would say sometimes.

* * *

‘Mr Spock, there have been developments in the insurgency and their hostility,’ Leleck said, ‘Given you’re not currently assigned to a starship I can’t go into details, but the situation has become pressing since the Enterprise reported their findings on Farius Prime. The detente is broken now that they’ve been found out.’

‘Is there a contingency plan in place?’ he asked.

‘As far as you are concerned, this means relocation to Starfleet HQ facilities on Earth,’ he said briskly, ‘Given T’Pau’s findings, Vulcan has no claim on the boy, and therefore no grounds for diplomatic custody.’

Spock looked across at T’Pau, seated opposite him and Leleck at the head of the over-large conference table. He had counted twelve seats when they entered the room and their company of three was a poor fit to the half-dark room. The empty seats were a looming reminder of the weight of their discussion, and the unseen hands that had signed orders down the line and exerted their will, from Earth to Vulcan and starbases dispersed in between. 

When T’Pau spoke only her mouth moved with a commanding inexpressiveness, ‘He is not Vulcan by our laws since he lacks a _katra._ ’ 

‘Physiologically,’ Leleck added, ‘that’s equally true, his DNA is fifteen percent more Human than Vulcan, likely due to your own Human heritage.’

‘However,’ T’Pau cut her eyes to Leleck, he had spoken too soon, ‘Given _Spohk_ ’s relation, he is within his rights to claim the child for Vulcan.’

‘Perhaps under normal circumstances,’ he said, incredulity seeping in, ‘but under Federation law, individuals that are derivative of unchecked eugenic means are extemporaneously overlooked by a conjunction of the Federation Council and Starfleet.’

‘Commodore, what constitutes personhood by Human law?’ T’Pau asked abruptly. 

Leleck exhaled shortly and brought his hands together on the table, ‘Unfortunately, as a species, we have still not reached an agreement.’

‘Do Humans consider free-will a part of it?’

‘Of course, we do.’

‘And yet, that which you speak of is not custody, but ownership,’ she said slowly and brutally.

‘In technical terms, eugenic results are considered Organically Organised Entities. Citizens of nowhere — to quell the tendencies that nearly destroyed all life on my planet two centuries ago. That is our prerogative when handling these cases. And it was so, long before First Contact.’

Spock leaned forward, and they looked to him as if they had forgotten his presence in their exchange, ‘Previously, we encountered one such individual, Khan Noonien Singh aboard the Enterprise. He was in a similar state of, was he not?’

‘At the time Starfleet was in its infancy, but effectively. Yes.’

‘Then,’ Spock continued measurely, looking at the middle point in the table, drawing his hands to a towering point of concentration, ‘Upon his capture, Khan and his contemporaries were discarded in a sleeper ship; the SS Botany Bay. It begs a simple question - is that what is to be done with the child, and any others like him?’

Leleck thought about it for a long moment, and Spock waited through the heavy silence. 

‘Don’t you want your life back, Mr Spock?’ he asked quietly, leaning in, ‘As we speak, your career is in limbo because of this. If you insist on being the child’s proxy…that may continue indefinitely. You will not have a homecoming with the rest of your crew.’

‘Please answer my question, Commodore,’ he looked at him, steeled. 

‘I’m not the decider,’ Leleck said, ‘You understand this work: I have my orders just as you do. My duty, currently, is to deliver the boy to Earth. Your duty is to comply, and the Vulcan Council has little ground to delay this since the child does not qualify in their terms as a person.’

‘We do not refute that he is alive,’ T’Pau said firmly. 

‘No?’ Leleck scoffed drily, shaking his head and rubbing his eyes, ‘But you refute that he has a soul. That’s as close to it as it gets. Worse, maybe. Humans innately understand that every living thing has something of a soul.’

T’Pau had no answer for several moments. Finally, she stood up and they stood up as politeness mandated, though Leleck did so with aching rigidity. 

‘I believe all that can be achieved here, is done,’ she said. 

She offered the ta’al, Spock returned it, and Leleck forced his hand into a rough approximation. 

‘ _Mene sakkhet ur-seveh_ ,’ she said to Spock. ‘ _Kah-if puk-tor. Kah-if fam putan-tor._ ’

Leleck waited until the doors slid shut behind her to speak, ‘I can’t speak, Vulcan, Mr Spock, but I can understand it. Look, I’m aware that Starfleet is seen as lesser by the Council, but we all have our assignments,’ he looked in his eyes; exhausted grey-green eyes, they may have been colleagues in another life-time, ‘They are not always pleasant, but that’s the price we must sometimes pay to be out there.’

And all this, Spock took to mean this galaxy, the infinite lifeforms. Leleck departed, and he remained standing for a moment, considering sacrifices. Known or otherwise. 

When the time came to depart for the day, Doctor T’Rell was sitting by the child in the main entrance foyer reviewing her PADD. The boy was straight-backed and stiff-lipped, hands on his legs, making his narrow wrists stick out from his sleeves, calf-bone thin and warranting some breed of pity. His eyes fell on Spock approaching, and his feet kicked out as if to jump up, but he restrained himself at the last moment and remained posited. The Doctor peered up at him and stood. 

‘You are departing for the day?’ 

‘Yes,’ Spock said. 

‘Very well,’ she briefly looked at the boy, then back, ‘Were it not for the corroborating medical evidence I would disbelieve him to be a eugenic outcome.’

‘How so?’

‘You must already be aware. Previously, I did not understand, but now it is clear.’

He inclined his head in question, not deigning to speak this time, ripped up enough by Human, Vulcan hostility for one day. Where was the voice of reason now?

‘He is emotional and…enervated,’ she went on, ‘When eugenics is involved, we expect to discover a threat, strength and ambitious purpose.’

Spock exhaled and stared over her shoulder at the child. He had lowered his head, keeping his knees pinned together and picking at the end of his scarf, dug into his coat to the bottom of his ears. 

‘It is shameful that he bears a resemblance to a Vulcan child,’ she said, ‘It is an insult to our blood.’

He shook his head gently, ‘Perhaps, but I am half Human, Doctor. As such, I take no offence in his existence. Will that be all?’

She said nothing and he took it by way agreement after a prolonged moment. 

Spock went past and the boy rose and trailed him. Neither of them looked back. From there, the boy sometimes fell a step or two back and resurged to a half-run to keep up.

Even as his mind reeled, Spock could sense the weight of the link against the back of his neck, upper-base of his spine. It reminded him of the Coleridge poem Jim had explained to him long ago; the sailor and his albatross. Accursed. He barricaded his mind, numbing himself to the effect, the puled and injured tones. It was not exactly a sound, coming in discordant, breaking waves. 

The child did not inquire about the greenhouse on the way back. He asked no questions and made no sound, and they had left the city limits by the time he spoke. 

‘I am not Vulcan,’ he said tacitly. 

Spock finished adjusting the navigation route and turned up the heating. Always cold, always with his head aching now, it was becoming a state he was accustomed to. He was once more ill-equipped to answer such a question, and yet he had known he would ask him sooner or later.

‘No, you are not’ he said. 

‘But my ears are…’ he said, ‘Like you.’

‘Yes,’ Spock said, he switched off the autopilot and extracted the control yoke and drove the hover up several feet. 

They whipped over the flat grounds, and in the rear left nothing but a zipline of sand and levitating dust. The tops of the hazy city sunk in the back horizon. 

‘Why?’

‘Why?’

‘Yes, why not Vulcan?’ 

He did not answer for a time, and the boy prompted him quietly, ‘Why?’

‘You do not have a _katra._ ’ 

‘What is a _katra_?’ 

‘It is the Vulcan soul.’

‘What is the soul?’

‘The essence of someone. It is unseen.’

‘Could I choose one?’ he asked quietly, ‘Like a name? Is it like a name?’

‘No,’ he said. 

The boy did not speak for an extended moment, and when Spock glanced at him he saw that he was deep in thought. There was a looming fear pounding at the back of his skull, begging to be let in. 

‘I am not Vulcan either,’ Spock admitted quietly. In his periphery, he saw the boy’s head turn to him, ‘My mother is a Human, from Earth.’ 

‘Am I Human?’ 

‘Partly,’ Spock said, ‘Yes.’

The boy considered it for a long moment, ‘On the Enterprise — like Kirk?’

Spock turned and looked at him briefly. He nodded. It was incidental, but it seemed preordained to drive a barb in his side—another ever-present reminder of the eugenic rupturing of their bodies, that which was most immediate and private. 

The boy turned to the window and rested his head by the glass, watching the upcoming salt pan. ‘Can I see the hologram? When we’re back.’

‘You may,’ Spock told him softly. He drove for a long time again in the quiet. The sun was just broaching afternoon air, simmering over the husked reeds on the bajadas, flowing west and running windward. 

Within the next ten kilometres or so the boy fell asleep as he was, and his mind ebbed. He did not dream. Spock was aware of a returning lightness in himself, a brief unburdening. Later, he would think back to the moment he switched the hover to autopilot and the glimpse of a second dust trail in the rearview monitor clumsily obscured by theirs. He did not see, or he saw and he didn’t. 

The scalp-like lustre of that sky was drawn taut ahead of them, he calculated that the Enterprise would be in range in five, point three ship’s hours. Fleetingly, he thought of his unfinished duties aboard the ship; the cordite sampling, perennial microbial tests, topsoil validity trials. Above all, he thought of his seat on the bridge. And _ashayam_ , he thought of him, lightyears astray. He looked outside his window at the passing desert and thought some more about the Human heart; where it beat; where he had laid a hand over Jim’s warm chest, flat-palmed and felt it answering in its alien home, speeding up. For a moment he dared think of that fabled after, _it will be good in the end_.

A hot and blurred squall of sediment ripped close behind and the hovercraft stuttered. Bright white light packed by the bumper for a moment. Spock glance at the rear monitor. The moment he caught sight of the second craft it overtook them by some feet and pivoted inward. The hovercraft pinwheeled violently.  He smacked against the window, and the laminated glass ruptured and sagged. The craft shuddered to a halt off the roadway. Spock sat up in time to see the other vehicle ahead of them, less than twenty feet. His vision stuttered from double to nothing and back. The child was awake and had pinned himself in his seat in panic. Two figures with their faces wrapped in gauzy sheets exited the hover and began the short stalk forward. They were tall, armed with Romulan phasers. Spock’s hands steadied as he adjusted the yoke, switching to manual and restarting the engine, snapping up and disengaging the flux capacitor. As they closed in, the engine chortled and he punched forward, sawing the vehicle rightward and going back toward Kir. The boy sat up to look through the back window on a craned neck. 

‘Remain low,’ Spock told him as he fought the damaged controls. The yoke vibrated with a left incline, making his arms burn to keep it steady. He chanced a look over his shoulder and found they were being pursued again, at a hundred feet and closing. Their headstart meant almost nothing.

There was a dull ache in his head, pulsing, a smear of mottled green backlit on the glass where his skull had cracked. The controls bucked and tore from his hands as the engine spittled and started to die. The boy had flattened himself to his seat and as the craft shuddered, skid, edge lowered right to the ground. Caught on the ground, they snapped into the air, and the craft flipped. Spock became netted by his seatbelt and overhung in the revolution. The craft screeched to a stop on its roof. Smoke gushed in. Blind for a moment and shuddering with coughs, he reached down to his hip and disengaged the seatbelt. He dropped onto his shoulders and rolled onto his front with his legs jammed up under him. The reversed flooring had littered with glass, and he doubled his coat under his arms and crawled to the passenger seat until he could make out the boy’s lax silhouette through the smoke.  He reached across the middle panelling and suddenly the boy’s hands flung out in answer, still hung up by his seatbelt. Spock got a shoulder under him before disengaging it. He expected the boy to be heavy in this state, but he was featherlight falling onto him and he was breathing raggedly and over his back for a moment before Spock settled him opposite him and looked into his face.

‘Are you hurt?’ 

He shook his head, but his lacerated brow bled down his cheek. Spock touched his face and withdrew it smeared red as if he had never witnessed blood before. Or perhaps it had been an immaterial, impossible thing that the child could bleed until now. He forced his eyes away and tried to slide the centre panelling back for the phaser. He pulled the short flange, but could only see a glimpse of the phaser inside and it would open no more than two inches. Part of the centre panelling had snapped clean and jammed up the opening.

A shadow encroached and a pair of boots, greyed by sediment came into view behind the boy. One leg kicked out the remainder of his window. Glass imploded over them. A pair of hands wrangled him by his ankles and started to drag him away. He yawped in a petrified animal voice. Spock snatched his upper arms to stop him from being pulled away but felt the force on the other end yanking, shucking him out and was afraid that he would snap in two. His mind flooded with the child’s terror. His eyes went to hot white points of blindness. His hands lost traction, and the boy was scraped away, raking at the gravelled debris. As he was pulled from view the acrid smoke and high desert air filled Spock’s lungs, vacuuming inward.  Spock began crawling out on his belly, hands cut up and sticky from the shards. His coat snagged and tore on a metal spire and he struggled with it and finally shed it like a cacoon. He emerged in the smoking imbroglio and stared and stared dizzily at the child still level with his sight. They had crashed on the salt pan, and the white powder and bulbous globs wiped off on him and grazed his cheeks as he was trawled back toward the parked hovercraft: doors opened, dark interior, the maw of a beast. 

The boy gathered his voice and screamed and it echoed in the canyons, throat-ripped and raw, wordless. His eyes agoggle in his skull and dry with panic, and and and: hazel. 

As Spock ambled to his feet, the other figure loped up behind him. He tackled and pinned him with a knee in the centre of his back.  He could not breathe for a time, writhing and pushing away. The other figure loosed overtop of him momentarily and he toppled him into his chest and for a moment they were entwined. As he arched up above him, the cloth around his face fell away and his eyes were liquid ink dark and eyebrows thin and face lined with years of sun. A Romulan ancestor from the fabled and pre-reform darkness. 

Spock reached for the junction of his shoulder and neck, and another panicked scream seared up every defence in him and he missed. The child continued to be pulled like a fresh born lamb to the slaughterhouse some ways off. The coppery taste of blood was thick in his mouth. His assailant flailed back and hurled a fist at him. Once, twice and a third time until his sight pulped. Spock seized a panting pause to  reach up  with both hands, grappling, and took whatever leverage he could; hooking his first two fingers into the man’s mouth, and clutching his lower jaw with a thumb. The Romulan snapped his mouth shut. His teeth sunk into the backs of Spock’s knuckles.  Even as blood leaked down to his wrist, Spock held fast. He snatched the base of his neck with his other hand. The man’s shoulders stiffened, and their eyes met: they knew what was to come. Spock snapped his neck away from himself. Spinal cord severed, vertebrae fractured loose; thick green blood dripped from his ear and his body became leaden carrion on top of him. His heart continued to beat for some time after he had died.  Using his knees for leverage, Spock jostled his way out. He staggered up, wheezing for air. His hands shook at his sides, the left dripping freely. Somewhere beyond them was an alien drift of blue; the scarf rolling away in the wind. Escaped entity.

The other man had picked the boy up around the middle, his limbs flying in protest, and was attempting to shove him into the car. Halfway, the world came and went in strips of darkness, tearing at the edges of his vision. Spock collapsed to his knees after a couple of steps and the link flooded his bearings with the child’s state of freefall horror. There was a tract of nothingness before the craft started up and Spock felt the heat of the headlights on his shoulders and over his head. Hard gusts were expelled as the hover lifted. With his face burning in salt, he listened to it draw away until there was no sound but the wind fluting between rocks and reeds. It all seemed like a rumour the desert had told itself and he half-believed it in his swimming, prostrate mind. 

As the link ebbed, he pitched himself up onto his hands and looked around, breathing in saw-edged hitches and saw some ways back the Romulan corpse. His head was turned half-way toward him as if to point to his killer with accusing, gaping eyes. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Mene sakkhet ur-seveh. Kah-if puk-tor. Kah-if fam putan-tor.**  
>  Live long and prosper. It is a fight, not a given.
> 
> And that is the last chapter of part 2!
> 
> Big thank you to [090519990305](https://090519990305.tumblr.com/tagged/%F0%9F%95%AF) for their help editing this chapter! Absolute legend.


	20. Triptych

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oooh boy has it really been two months-ish since the last update? Coulda fooled me (Ps. Big, big apologies for the wait, and big, big thank you for everyone commenting and liking in the meantime)

_Time was passing like a hand waving from a train I wanted to be on.  
_ _I hope you never have to think about anything as much as I think about you._

**— Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close**

* * *

**I.**

— tired and unsleeping and alive: he wondered about his father’s grave. He realised he had never asked his mother where he was buried. There was no Kirk family plot.

‘Computer, on,’ he rubbed his eyes and stared into the enlightened screen. No waiting subspace calls, no messages. 

He made a half turn to his cabinet behind him and fished out a glass and a bottle. He poured himself a finger of amber-something and put it on the table and leaned on his elbows with his head ducked. On second thought he swivelled back, halted. Spock’s lyre was perched on the shelf. He reached out and ran two fingers across the strings and listened for familiarity. The instrument had appeared in his quarters the day Spock beamed down. No note. By his own hand, the sounds were like no music at all.

The chronometer above blinked red-eyed. There was still time—twenty-five minutes and change before the Enterprise exited Vulcan’s range. He turned back and drummed his fingers on the tabletop, polishing off his drink and resisting pouring another. It wouldn’t do to meet the call half-gone. But Kirk considered it belligerently. He dribbled a few more drops into his glass.

The computer port buzzed before he was done capping the bottle. The stopper dribbled out of his hand, the table, the floor and rolled into the abyss. It wasn’t a direct subspace call; it was routed through the bridge.

‘Kirk here.’

Beta shift, Lieutenant Hugo, ‘Captain, you have an incoming call.’

‘I’m currently waiting for a scheduled call, Lieutenant—’

‘From Vulcan, Sir?’

Kirk put his hands together, pressed his lips, ‘Yes—’ Uhura had been told when he coordinated the range from Vulcan, and McCoy had found out with a little bit of salt and fat. No one else aboard knew.

‘Sorry, Captain,’ Hugo cleared his throat.

‘What is it, Lieutenant?’ he said. Tried again, ‘It’s alright.’

‘Well, the call _is_ from Vulcan,’ he blinked rapidly.

‘From Mr Spock?’

‘No, Ambassador Sarek,’ he said, ‘When he made contact he cited regulation 254, subsection 2.’

Kirk swallowed. The information seemed to slip through his mind, washed away in a slurry of alcohol.

‘It pertains to calls from Ambassadorial powers being compulsory under—’

‘I am aware, Lieutenant.’

‘Of course, Sir.’

‘Put it through.’

In a moment Sarek’s presence filled the screen, upper chest up and unchangeable like a stone through the ages. 105 this year, and he hardly looked thirty years his senior.

‘Ambassador Sarek,’ he tugged at his hem under the desk in a faint attempt to neaten it, and smiled with restraint. ‘This is a surprise.’

He observed him for a few more moments, Kirk realised that the bottle of uncapped whiskey, the glass and lyre behind him must have made up some view and cleared his throat as if it might distract from the items. His ears burned.

‘Good evening, Captain Kirk. It has come to my attention that you had arranged a subspace call with Spock at this time.’

Kirk blinked and leaned forward, he dropped his smile, ‘Yes,’ he murmured, ‘Has something happened? Where is he?’

‘Spock is presently indisposed,’ Sarek’s hands were an immovable knot on the table.

There was a cold sensation running the ranks of Kirk’s spine, a tightening under his ribs and a spectre of doubt. Vulcans cannot lie—he knew better by now: Vulcans took creative liberties with wording.

‘Why,’ Kirk asked, ‘is he indisposed?’

‘It is only my understanding that he would not be able to return your call and I should, therefore, put your mind at ease.’

‘I appreciate you calling, but I don’t understand why it’s necessary.’

Sarek thought for a moment and arranged his words delicately, ‘Given your personal regard for Spock, I believed the courtesy would be necessary.’

‘Well, thank you,’ he said. ‘But on return from the Luyten system, the Enterprise will be in range again. May I expect him then?’

‘I apologise,’ he said, and there was the hint of condescension, ‘I am no more privy to the details of the future than you are.’

‘Sir, may I speak plainly?’

He dropped his chin in a half-nod. His face had closed up and become impenetrable, ‘You were not previously?’

Kirk pressed his lips and went on, ‘Did Spock ask you to contact me?’

‘He did not,’ Sarek answered.

He took a breath, ‘Then, if I were to make a studied guess, Ambassador, I would hazard that you have read the private subspace message I sent to Spock to arrange this meeting.’

Another recalcitrant tilt of his great and ancient head.

Kirk almost faltered. Approach it logically, he thought, ‘Then you know how much he means to me…if there is anything he needs or any—any way I could help, please, I must know.’

Sarek leaned back and anyone less studied than Kirk may have missed the series of expressions that came and went on his face, though he was harder to read, still Kirk thought he saw derision.

‘Captain, it would be illogical to tread lightly regarding a matter of which we are both imminently aware for the sake of asceticism. We are well past that point. I am aware of your personal relationship with Spock, and, your affections for him. And, in this most recent matter, it is clear that you have been led astray by your emotions. So I will tell you this:

‘Admiral Komack disclosed to me that you apparently had no intention of revealing the eugenic weapon until Spock presented his personal log. He, of course, behaved logically. Yet, barring that, you risked both your own career and reputation as well as his. In short, regardless of your personal feelings’—and he said this word as if it were a filthy word, ‘you cannot allow yourself to interfere with such serious matters and distract Spock from what must be done.’

Kirk looked down at the table; the condensation from his glass had run a ring onto the surface. He felt like someone had filled his chest with cotton.

‘I understand,’ he said sharply and looked up, ‘But I have no self-interest here. If I could be certain that Spock would be safe then I wouldn’t presume to contact him.’

‘Then, perhaps it would be more acquiescent to withdraw your personal claim on him for the time being,’ he said, ‘Spock is Vulcan in many ways, but he remains susceptible to certain Human short-comings. If it is for your assurance to check his safety and fulfilment, then he may be swayed by your _need_ for it.’

‘Short-comings…’ he muttered bitterly, and his head had begun to pound as if he were in a narrow dingy being tossed against rocks. ‘What is it you’re requesting, exactly, Ambassador?—or accusing me of?’

‘It may be unwise to attempt to contact him again,’ Sarek said, ‘It will distract from the essential process at hand.’

And that was that he supposed. His throat was closing up against any hope for final arguments.

‘Simple…repetition of certain words,’ Sarek went on gravely, ‘—Vulcan words, does not prerequisite understanding of them. But to Spock, who was raised on Vulcan, in the Vulcan way, such a word carries unprecedented significance.’

 _Ashayam_ , was it a strike of modesty, or arbitration, which had caused Spock to lend the word to him?

‘I assure you, Ambassador,’ he said as steady, ‘I would never presume to use a word I did not understand the weight of.’

Sarek nodded vaguely, ‘I see that your years of interstellar travel have given you a healthy opinion of your cross-cultural understanding, Kirk. I suggest you revaluate this instance carefully,’ and he held up a ta’al, which of course, he could not have meant as anything but a show of politeness.

Goodbye — or some variation, numbly. He remained as he were for a while. Long enough to finish his drink, then another. And inexplicably, the hand of memory caught on some shamble of time with Spock. Kirk lay his head on the table in a nest of his arms and waded deeper still. For the first few months into the first year of the mission they had both worn the gold—Spock hadn’t been chief science officer yet, only First Officer, and Gary had been on active duty. It had been a long time since he thought of him.

They beamed down on a diplomatic first contact mission to Teral 2. As he recalled, Spock had something of wilderness about him then. Or maybe there was something in him that Kirk just didn’t understand. They had only spoken a handful of times off duty; they hadn’t seen each other bleed, and that had something to do with it. Must have. The command team was still taking it’s first hobbling, limping steps on new dynamics, but that mission always stuck out. It seemed to be the true beginning. Meeting him could have been, but it wasn’t—that was straight-forward, cut and dry. _This is Noyota Uhura, Chief Communications Officer, and finally—Mr Spock, First Officer._ He’d been no more than several cuts of lines, dark hair and lithe, careful form with his hands hidden behind his back.

Inhabitants of Teral 2 were humanoid, bipedal. When Jim and Spock walked in at the fore of the team, they greeted Spock first and decorated him with a crown of white-green vines. Explained, that as the leading authority it should be made clear to their people that he was the guest of honour and, the Captain of the starship Enterprise. When it was Spock’s turn to respond he had blinked, and taken a half-step back beside Kirk.

‘I am honoured by your customs, but I am not the Captain,’ he said in a comely voice.

What had he been then?—young, very young and he’d felt it too. Spock seemed to be holding his breath when he turned to look at him, arching an eyebrow. The moment when Kirk looked back at him must have lasted a few seconds, but now thinking back, that was the first time he saw him. Really saw him.

**II.**

Here came the tender days, sight unseen, unthinking in resolve as he were, that if you stripped back the years; the dressing of time on wounds, they would be fresh as ever, and begin to bleed again. But the Enterprise herself had no memory. Yes, and here was the fact of the matter: Spock was now only present in the implementation of the work. Say — he put together that roster, he wrote the hypothesis for this experiment, two weeks after he had left, an ensign reminded him: Mr Spock asked that I lead the assignment while he is away. Alright, Kirk said, and hated to hear his name. He woke from waking: shower, shave, brush, dress, step out of his quarters and go to work, sit the conn until the side of him ached. One system to the next, one mule run at a time and no more; pick up, deliver; he must have said, this is a routine inspection tens of times; I’m Captain Kirk, and then would rise the instinctive follow-up of _and this is my First Officer Mr Spock_ — to stop himself he bit his tongue and at the end of the second week he turned to introduce Spock, and stood dumbfounded for an instant. Blood filled his mouth. Then, there was essentially one conversation to be had over and over with expedition leaders, colony heads, the newly minted peoples to have joined the Federation. No incidents, no loss of crew, a vast series of greetings. And in between, he thought, _ashayam_ , and turned the word over in his mind as if he might find Spock on the other side, between the syllables. As if to prove to Sarek that he understood its weight. 

Stardate 2145.2 — En route Cabral sector, Erasmus System on approach; do your due diligence, keep your head down. Brass reports came in bullet points, Komack checked in on his renegade Captain every day.

Soon, McCoy came out of thin air and brought with him the whistling tides of the Enterprise. He came with a look you might use to ease a cornered creature in order to slip it into a cage. Kirk tried to think back on his own wilderness, but time was diffuse of actions and routines. He could say, for instance, what happened three days ago, but he had no conception of what three days ago felt like.

Illogical, illogical, something in him chided. Or no, Spock would understand, and perhaps no one else could. He turned to McCoy now hooked to the left of the conn.

‘Jim, I have a special log here,’ he held out a PADD to him.

‘Alright, Bones,’ he murmured. He took it and gave it a perfunctory once over, ‘Mandated shore-leave?’

‘It’s high time. I’d hate to have to do more paperwork for it, could you make this old man’s job easy for once?’

‘Erasmus V?’

‘Sure, good as any place to throw the anchor. I’ve heard nice things about the climate—a _veritable paradise_ ,’ he held out both hands as if to paint a picture and knocked one back into a fist, ‘Just seventy-two hours.’

‘They say that about almost everywhere,’ Kirk murmured as he signed and returned it.

‘That easy?’ McCoy examined it as if he may find it counterfeit.

‘I thought you didn’t want a fight,’ Kirk looked ahead. ‘ETA Mr Sulu?’

‘Approximately three hours if we increase speed to warp four, Captain,’ he said.

‘Go ahead,’ he turned back, ‘I wouldn’t get too excited, Komack will have the final say.’

‘Well,’ and he smiled thinly, ‘We’ve been good, done our jobs, run the errands and all the rest. Why wouldn’t he see fit?’

And he had no answer to that, or, he had a few hundred. Because Komack might stub his toe before calling in today; have an argument with his partner; run into an old Academy enemy; be ailed by a fissured tooth. Kirk could see him already, asking, _rest from your rest? Doesn’t seem right, Captain._

McCoy leaned on the back of his chair, ‘While we’re on the subject, come on down to sickbay later.’

‘Thank you, Doctor, but I’m not sick,’ Kirk turned partway to him, raised a brow, ‘I know that play your medical handbook. It won’t work this time.’

He lowered his voice, ‘And Deltan rum won’t change your mind?’

‘Never ceases to amaze me how you get your hands on all this contraband.’

‘The Captain is a friend of mine.’

‘I might drop by later,’ he said evenly and smiled. He looked down at his own PADD, already taking leave of the conversation. ‘Not taking medical prerogative are you?’

‘Not yet,’ he said in a voice which meant, but soon I might.

‘Alright, Mr Sp—’

The bridge halted. Kirk swallowed the rest of his sentence. He felt over-extended by his heart thundering with shame, liable to tumble into his lap. McCoy’s hand landed on his shoulder, the firm, extended hand which was a friend’s but more to the point the physicians impersonal, adroit touch. He half expected an examination: Jim — the Enterprise doesn’t need you any more than Spock does. All the better if they never had. This is the price of dependence.

McCoy patted him uncertainly, ‘I don’t know whether to be flattered or insulted.’

Kirk half-smiled, and played along even though his voice emerged as in a croak, ‘I think he’d say the same.’

‘I’ll take it as a compliment and run.’

After McCoy’s departure, he sat still for a long time and gathered himself. Soon, Uhura began to hum as she worked. Twenty-three correspondences sat in line for his attention; requests from upcoming ambassadors from Grae; a winding comm from Kench Mafun, the Tellarite Master Secretary, which boiled down to one essential question: may our students at the academia be granted access to some of your declassified logs for study? For debate, you mean, Kirk thought. Kench managed to call him a rogue wayfaring soldier, but he likely meant it in good faith. Yes, certainly — Regards, Captain James T. Kirk. From Earth, he had messages from some old Academy friends who knew his sojourn on the Enterprise was coming to an end and wanted to get drinks, names he hadn’t thought of for years; updates from HQ; the regular scheduling message from Komack; a message from his mother: she and Peter had arrived at Deneva safely. Uhura passed to his left, gleaned some data over Sulu’s shoulder, then drifted back murmuring. Music as music did not exist. There were research collaboration requests from the USS Dunkirk and a ping later in the shift from Carol: he had forgotten to send David a birthday card this year. He thought; I didn’t know you gave them to him.

Eventually, with the last dregs of the day swilling in his mind, he left for an empty conference room to take Komack’s call. There was a chill and not so much as a glass of water. His tongue was left dry and anxious in his throat in tepid anticipation of another cut dry meeting. He sat over his PADD in an attempt to brush up the forever remaining crumbs of paperwork, his eyes glazed in exhausted belligerence. Komack was ten minutes early to the rendezvous time — his face was flat as a coin, high-brow shining and a swab of white hair. Innocuous check-in, the sector, specific times of crossings, scientific work completed in the last twenty-four hours and finally clerical matters.

‘One last thing — I saw the request CMO put in for shore-leave on Erasmus V,’ Komack said, glancing down at his notes. He took a sip of coffee before going on. ‘Now, considering the Enterprise’s probation has been extended, I don’t think it’s appropriate to approve it at this time. We can review it again next week.’

‘Extended?’

‘Yes. There will be a communique tomorrow.’

Kirk blinked numbly, gut turning. He tried to check his tone, but when he spoke he felt the words being ripped from him, ‘I don’t understand, we have complied with every condition. Down to the letter. No delays, no damages or conflicts.’

‘And,’ Komack said, ‘You have been found…wanting.’

‘What are the terms of the extension?’

‘Another two months,’ he said, ‘Subject to review at the end of that period.’

‘Leaving three months, in total, until the end of the Enterprise’s five-year mission. How are we going to get anything done in that time?’

‘That’s still undecided, Captain, please, don’t get ahead of yourself,’ Komack added, mouth twisting. Then he straightened up, ‘The injunction stands, as it were. The Enterprise will continue to be restricted to Federation space for the time being.’

‘I’m within my rights to file an appeal,’ Kirk said sharply, ‘It’s plain as day it’s not the Enterprise’s work at fault. It’s your bias that’s keeping us tied up.’

‘Actually, no,’ Komack raked white and thin strands from his long forehead, then went on dispassionately, ‘The extension came directly from HQ. In any case, you are not a free agent.’

There was nothing left to say, Komack settled his hands in front of him. If that will be all, he said before he signed off. Kirk sat in the half-dark, throat tightening up with rage he had no device to express. He leaned back in the seat and felt any shred of self left sloughing off him, loosening and blowing away on a cold draft of air. In that fugue instance, time had no meaning, no terms or boundaries, and he thought about everything and nothing all at once.

A hollow clarity was coming, entering from the top of his chest, incised into the hollow of his collarbones and filling him up. Breathing, breathing, shutting his eyes and going back in.

And he lay swathed in the grasses, in the shade, the far side of the auditorium: he could hear the murmur of the crowd, and Thomas - Tommy, as he was known to him then, was under his arm by the neck. The sky was freediving over them. He adjusted his arm to the cleft of Tommy’s back and felt his thinness. Thin as they all were by that day. He knocked a fist against his spine, nervous.

‘Jim—’

‘Shut up,’ he said and tried to focus his eyes between the seedling stalks. Trunks of legs beneath weaponed hardware skirted the building, guarding the double-bolted door, the crowd which seemed to begin pulsing in confusion and early panic.

‘We’re going to be in so much trouble,’ Tommy muttered, pushing him away with the flat of his hand against his cheek. It was sweating and when he dropped it the breeze coolly licked his handprint on Jim’s face.

‘What’s the worse they’ll do?’ Jim whispered, shoving him back, then going on his elbows and listening.

‘Scut, lab work,’ he batted away some gnat from his red face, his arms were pink with irritation. ‘I can’t think, I’m so goddamn itchy.’

Jim put his arm over him to deter him rising again and gripped his collar in a fist, ‘Just hang on.’

‘Why? Because your dad had a hunch?’ Tommy asked. ‘You have to think, Jim. It doesn’t make sense, what’re they gonna do to everyone?’

‘I don’t know,’ he murmured, half-absently. Squinting, he could see the guards beginning to move.

Beneath his arm, Tommy moaned, ‘He’s here, he’s here! Jim, we gotta go, we’ll just say we forgot and I’m sure they’ll let us in.’

Jim glanced at him, his friend’s two dark eyes were like stones in his head, directed to a lowered dirge where they had a view of the path leading to the auditorium: Governor Kodos was passing through. That walk, which they had only ever seen at a distance, on a pin-needle stage was unmistakable; half amble half float. His toes always meeting the ground first. The sum of his face was his pointy, almost funny goatee, the watering and bagged eyes and pushed back and curling hair.

Tommy tried to jump to his feet, but Jim shoved him down again. He stopped struggling briefly, and his ragged breathing took over, rattling around his ribcage. It was xylophonic. Kodos disappeared from view, and they heard the guards greet him.

This was again the same place he had been before, time and again— time to lay in the grass or follow the line. He listened to his own breathing, he turned his head instinctively and smelled that distant memory. Adrenal glands gushing, each pulse in every part of his body threatening to unseam his skin and implode him. He had to move. He moved.

The next creatures to greet him in all the ship were the orchids. The humidity and warmth of the dome sat atop his bones and clarified their stiffness. Kirk took the seat at the far end of and exhaled. Wishful thinking: that if he sat in the manner of defeat Spock would again arrive and call him like last time. Then, it would be time to rearrange the world and repurpose the rest of their time.

He shut his eyes.

‘Sir?’

He snapped up at a voice from the meantime. Dizzy, smelling charred flesh on himself like sweat, that fevered filament. Scorch-back mode of dissent. His visitor stepped forward. His face was illuminated by the screen light of a PADD. The angles of him were ghostly. It took a moment to recognise him.

‘Sulu?’ Kirk stood and felt his knees knock into their sockets. He didn’t know how long he’d been here.

Sulu had stopped midway down the plank, his head twitched with the impulse to look over his shoulder, ‘I’m sorry, Captain, I didn’t mean to intrude,’ his voice dropped off toward the end, ‘Just here to look over the orchids.’

‘It’s quite alright,’ Kirk glanced over the orchids, a minor shudder went with it, ‘You’ve done a great job.’

‘Thank you,’ Sulu half-smiled, ‘You know they’re quite temperamental, actually. Mr Spock wrote the initial thesis, but the atmospheric controls need to be adjusted based on Delinia’s moon cycles…well, anyway, they’re quite a find, I mean.’

Kirk nodded, he looked at Sulu carefully. He took the sign, or he made one for himself to take. In either misdirection of truth he said, ‘What’s our ETA to Erasmus?’

‘Erasmus V?’ he frowned and took a moment to count it up, ‘Maybe four, five hours.’

‘At warp five, if you plot us in for Vulcan, how long would that take?’

Sulu began to chuckle as if he was entering in on a joke, but Kirk’s seriousness broke any illusion of that, ‘Two days, give or take.’

More to himself than Sulu, he nodded his head, ‘Alright. I’ll see you on the bridge, Lieutenant.’

Sulu’s brows knotted, mouth narrowing and pressing as Kirk stepped past him.

* * *

He spent the night in repose, in loss, and tension of the following day. The place to sit was his desk; his quarters; his computer, to consider a plan which would give them the range needed. How treasonous could it be to steal seventy-two hours of Star Fleet’s time after he’d given years of his life, near his life itself and every vestige of his personal self? Body, at times. Moments were now, that nausea licked under his throat at the idea; the hands that had touched him, the bodies he’d taken part in; contracepted against the implications partly or entirely by adrenaline, fear.

On the conn the next morning, he stood and took a half-turn about the room and stood in front of the main view to address everyone (and he couldn’t fathom the customary smile of his which came so close to fatherhood as he could imagine): ‘Attention Bridge crew.’

His voice seemed to be phantasmagorically amplified, coming from his chest like the smoke-heat of a genie’s from old Human imagination. Continued, more quietly, ‘As you are all aware, our probation continues. For the following seventy-two hours, I have decided to instigate a skeleton-crew exercise with the following crewmembers, Lieutenants Sulu, Uhura, and Chekov, and Chief Engineer Scott.’

An inimitable shiver of consciousness went through the crew, all heads nearly vibrating with curiosity to look around. Only Chekov’s young head swivelled with his eyes puppy-wide,hair flopping.

‘So — if I have not called your name to consider your shifts for this period cancelled,’ he pushed himself until a smile peeled onto his face, as warm as he could hope for, ‘I recommend taking some time for R and R.’

Half the bridge emptied in the next few minutes, and Kirk held his ground until the last back was slid shut under the turbolift door. He put his hands together and churned them to get some feeling into them.

‘Sir, I cannea say that this was on the schedule,’ Scott, from his right-stage perch, cross-armed and brown eyes like malt milk. When he spoke everyone looked at him. A looseness had come over the remaining crew, Sulu swivelled in his chair, Uhura standing and stepping to the barrier.

‘No, it certainly wasn’t.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Chekov piped up, looking between him and Sulu as if his friend might have some idea. Maybe, it would have been better to be betrayed by Sulu’s confidence than to face unprecedented circumstances.

‘Our course is no longer Erasmus V,’ he said, ‘Mr Chekov, I want you to plot us for Vulcan — out of Starbase scanner ranges that we might encounter. Sulu, plot another course for Erasmus V, also out of scanner range.’

After this, came a long silence; they were both awaiting an explanation and knowing full well too, that it was moot.

‘Our probation has been extended,’ he said, ‘Not by Komack, not for any reason. And I think whatever our answer is, is back on Vulcan.’

‘Sir, why can’t we just go so far as Vulcan’s subspace range?’ Scott asked.

He grimaced, and put the flat side of a forefinger against his chin, staring at his boots, ‘I have a feeling that won’t be enough. I chose you, all, specifically because I know you will understand. But I can’t ask you to put your careers on the line for a gut feeling — so, if anyone doesn’t want to participate, you’re free to go. And if, everyone is in disagreement, then, I’m asking for advice.’

‘Advice, Captain?’ Uhura lay her hands on the barrier.

He nodded, ‘Regardless of how…actionable the plan is, one way or another, I must get to Vulcan. It’s imperative.’

Another silence, a scatter of nods. No backing out now.

‘And anyway,’ he half chuckled, ‘When the bricks come down on us, I’ll take full responsibility for whatever consequences there will be.’

‘ETA to Vulcan would be a little over forty-nine hours outside of scanner range, Captain,’ Chekov looked up from his console.

He smiled, really, this time, ‘Alright then, good luck to all of us.’

**III.**

Now on the swing-around to Vulcan, Sulu at the helm for the twenty-fourth hour straight, Yeoman Rand roped into the plan to keep them alive, awake. McCoy was last to find out. Sitting in the sickbay with his vials behind him, Kirk couldn’t differentiate the alcohols from the medicines. So many were rare and in a few drops. Modern medicine seemed to have turned its head back toward alchemy in McCoy’s hands.

‘So, what?’ he said. ‘You think Sarek is hiding something?’

‘I don’t think anything,’ he said, ‘I just…need to get to Vulcan, Bones.’

‘Was the Pon Farr catching?’ he half grinned. Kirk gave him a stern look, and McCoy retracted, ‘Bad joke. Though, you oughta know that this won’t fair well if— _when_ , Starfleet finally wisens up.’

‘It’s a risk I’m willing to take.’

‘On what evidence?’ McCoy leaned forward on the table. Conspiring to knock sense into him.

‘You’re beginning to make me regret telling you,’ Kirk said, thinking of it as a joke, but it came out like a plank of wood splintering.

‘I think, I don’t know what else to do if not this. With the probation, the…the kid,’ he blinked, ‘I know Spock. I know him, Bones. He would have made contact, something. Or maybe—’

He inhaled the words, the consideration. The last thing he needed McCoy to see was past his pitting eyes, the dry hands and overlong hair. To see into something coming loose. The Doctor didn’t miss it. Not a twitch, or upshine in the eyes, the waiting tears. Kirk realised, perhaps too late, that he must seem as if he had lost control. And this outside recognition could probably only be second to the reality; he _had_ lost control. Rather, it had been picked out of him like a thread. Coming loose, in all corners. He could not see beyond Vulcan. Could feel nothing but the preemptive strike of the heat and at once the heat of the past, the smell of his own blood in sheaves across his chest, the sweat, the noise of steps. He felt ill and nauseated by the two mirrors in his past and his present, facing each other; Tarsus was Vulcan as Vulcan was Tarsus, the gut feeling of generations mingling in his lower abdomen, rooted in the nerves at the base of his spine.

Cold, dry hands held his face, ‘Jim,’ McCoy said his name clearly. ‘Breathe.’

Kirk knew he was being examined, and rowed back to the safety of the shore. McCoy patted his cheek.

‘We should have never left Vulcan to begin with,’ McCoy said, ‘Rules be damned — you need rest.’

The red pills he gave to him, two of them, glittered like pomegranate arils and plinked in his palm. He brought him a cup of water, and he lay a hand flat on his shoulder until he swallowed them.

* * *

Tommy had sprung up; incited by a gust of wind baring the particles leaking from the auditorium; sound waves of vanished bodies: how much could it mean to the men who had pulled the trigger if there weren’t any bodies left to bury? The rest of the crowd had begun to writhe with the agony of their newfound space, pounding walls, screaming. In a brief moment, Jim caught sight of Kodos, fleeing on his toes, backed by two guards. The distraction was enough for Tommy to jam the flat of a palm against Jim’s skull and bounce his head off the ground. He dove up from his belly to his knees, to his feet. Jim stood dizzily and watched as Tommy’s thin white arms flailed, forearms alight with allergies. He charged toward the door in a pathetic lope. A flash came and was received by Tommy in mute shock before he dropped to his side, and behind the phaser were two wide eyes of disbelief. By the time Jim scuffled down, the doors had been shunted open from the inside. He kneed by Tommy laying flat, engulfed in rage, legs of the survivors pounding by.

Tommy lay on his side, and the half of his face in the dirt was smouldering. One eye-socket of a jellied and blooded hole, skin scraped raw to the whittle of his facial muscles, the cheek and glitter of exposed molars of barely new adult teeth in the gaps.

Immaculately, his other eye remained open and blinked and blinked. Someone kicked Jim’s shoulder running past, shadows bandied over them, Tommy’s fist clenched and unclenched. His eye blinked through the shock. Hands picked them both up, carried them away, but Jim could only remember Tommy’s face, the stench of his seared flesh, the beading blood, his half damp, half singed hair. The cacophonous injury, and distant yells of guards being descended upon by the remaining half of Tarsus IV’s colony.

Emulsified night, with the look of tressed velvet up to his chin. He had a headache when he woke up. Ghosts, reburied. Kirk sat up in bed and tasted the hours in his mouth, his mossy teeth and the caterpillar tongue exploring them. And for all that, his body seemed to have been crimped free to become some bits of sinew joined by rubber bands over steel. He realised he had not made it back to his quarters but had been put to bed in the sickbay. Tucked in by McCoy.

He put his feet over the edge and found the place deserted when the sensor lights flared. He made for his quarters to freshen up and reset. The corridors were droning with the usual work, unwise to the destination, only a hurtling city in space. In a way, they had become as historically innocent as Humans before they made inquiries about the stars. When he reached the turbo-lift he was alone again, decks three, four — on the fifth, the door opened, and he waited for the joining passenger. Chekov, with pink cheeks, panting over his knees and having left in the corridor behind him a double-set line of crewmen looking after him as if he’d gone mad. No doubt having punched past their shoulders and knocked thighs and knees and stubbed toes.

‘Lieutenant?’ Kirk frowned, throwing stern eyes behind Chekov to clear onlookers.

‘From the bridge,’ Chekov inhaled, ‘Sir.’

‘Yes, yes?’

‘A subspace message. Urgent,’ he said.

Kirk pulled him in by his shoulder from the threshold and sprung the lever into the reverse direction. When the door shut, he had a thousand more questions, but Chekov was still reclaiming himself. Subspace from who? Kirk thought. And only one answer occurred to him. By the time he opened his mouth to ask, the door had too.

Three pairs of eyes were affixed for their entrance, small breathing in pulses of chests. Uhura stood to greet him, and what seemed like tatters of Chekov fell out behind him. The young Lieutenant motioned toward the Captain like a prized calf for his colleagues to see. Kirk stood with just as much uncertainty, hoping to read everything into their eyes. Uhura clasped his arm with enough pressure to bring him back.

‘What is it?’

‘We’ve received a subspace message from Kerrius,’ she said.

He blinked, ‘Kerrius? The merchant we met on Farius Prime? Alright,’ he breathed and breathed, and thought, not Spock, it’s alright, he’s alright. ‘On the screen please, Uhura.’

Kirk stepped down and took his seat. He arranged himself elbows to wrists on the conn and glanced back.

‘Sir, before…’ she trailed, hand ready on the button, ‘We’ve already seen it.’

And she tried to imbue some warning in her eyes, snagging her lips between her teeth, ‘Go on, Lieutenant.’

Pin-light, a surrounding chokehold of tar. For a few moments, it was impossible to know what he was looking at. Details came once the eye could parse an eye. Eye to eye: a long nose and cheek flesh in a mottled sleeve of blood, dark as chewed spinach. The silence was clawed by breathing, distorting in the speakers over their heads in spindrifts.

And the voice which came, narrowly as a splintered bone, was unmistakable in accent. A muttering in Vulcan. Then standard in the next layer, ‘—Kerrius, I am on the Aeneid, coordinates of 782.332.127 —’ and repeating, repeating the sequence twice, then three times as if to reassure himself it was correct. Something disrupted his concentration and the great and over-angled head pushed into the screen, creaked away. Neck, like a loose hinge. All blood. His right ear had been pared from it’s angled point into a jagged oval. In the gouts of the green were the white crosscuts of cartilage. From his ears came earrings of jade, and ran down his neck to the hollow of his neck, over his adam’s apple, little more than a frightened animal in a mound, jumping, jittering with half-said words.

Screen, shot blank. The stars came in and over. They were moving again, someone—Sulu, coughed into his hand. Enunciations of common existence were all over the bridge again. Their crew within a crew seemed to have become ragged and ill in a minute. Scott stood to his left with his arms crossed and his head lowered as if in an attempt to enter his own navel and disappear in a loop. Chekov, red-faced with tears of shock in the basin of his eyes, and Sulu coughing again chalk-white featherlight, it felt as if you could crack a hand into his chest as easily as a plaster figurine. Uhura’s stylus scratched over their dissolution to decipher the Vulcan words he has said.

She said, shakily, ‘I can’t be certain, but — he was asking for help.’

Kirk let his head dangle and bob.

‘What do we do now?’ Sulu turned in his seat.

‘Increase speed to warp seven,’ Kirk said, ‘Scotty?’

‘Aye, we can manage that.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fingers-crossed - new chapter weekly from now on. Thanks for reading!


	21. Kindly Mutineers

Outside his quarters a storm was gathering. The PADD lit up and stole his eye, again and again. Sooner or later he had been expecting this. Kirk checked the chronometer: five hours to Vulcan, more or less. As he dressed, his door buzzed, less one boot, he called his visitors in. McCoy and Uhura. Behind them the corridor was gurgling and he caught sight of enquiring faces, raging faces, tight lips, harsh brows. A dozen and a half-dozen crew members all attempting to peer in. The door shut behind his guests.

Kirk jammed his foot into the boot, knocked his heel in, ‘It’s happened?’

McCoy frowned, ‘Scotty can get the situation under control—’

He smiled thinly as he pulled the cuff of his pants over his boot and stood to face them, ‘I can’t hide in here, Bones. Uhura?’

‘About two-hundred declarations and counting,’ she said. ‘Scotty has locked down engineering and the bridge. But the inter-ship communication subs are…overwhelmed. Over three-hundred subspace messages queued up for HQ.’

‘There’s been a couple of arguments,’ McCoy crossed his arms.

‘Alright,’ he pulled at his golds, they didn’t seem to fit him. ‘Uhura please get back to the bridge, and try to keep the channels clear — I’ll be there soon. Bones, keep an eye out for trouble.’

When the door opened to let them out, the crowd was thicker still, more faces, wide-eyed disillusion. Alone again, he took a handful of breaths and stripped off his uniform. From an untouched depth of in his wardrobe, he pulled out a grey, collared shirt, jeans, and a belt. Civilian outfit. He redressed himself quickly and paused at the centre of his quarters for a long moment, looked down at himself, took a moment to examine his splayed hands. No braids on his wrists. He stepped back into the bathroom and overrode voice authorisation to Spock’s quarters.

The entrance unfurled. He was stuck at the threshold, staring into the dark, letting his eyes adjust instead of calling up the lights. Some impulse said light might disrupt something, a spirit of the past, flutters of memory. He moved in, and Spock’s quarters panned around him. Ate him up. It smelled like Spock. Emptiness, red light dancing over a bust of Surak’s face by the divider. Kirk swallowed and moved to Spock’s cupboard, opened it and felt Spock’s fingerprints under his own. A thousand times he would have opened the same doors. A scent of clean, dry laundry, Enterprise wash liquid under the second wave of Spock’s own, his cologne — what was it, it was unknown, star anise, paper, ink, salt-water, licked iron, pepper, jasmine, mint — a sea to wash him away. Kirk put his hand between a set of robes, shaking; silk, wool, linen, some knit, some weft, a Vulcan material he knew the name of but could not pronounce.

Washout, let-down; did not know his lover’s native tongue. He carefully shut the doors and detoured back through his own quarters.

When he finally stepped outside, the crowd swayed back. All sound ceased in a wave. Eyes rolled up and down his body — this was not their Captain. Not another command left in him. Shoulders scuffed with the weight of his own decisions. He looked around; Lieutenants, Ensigns; Veer, Laurel, Bernicio, O’Riley and more. Names, names, names he had tied to faces. Who is good at what and when, where are they comfortable, when do they need rest, food, home? Whose friend had died on the last away mission, whose lover — he had married five couples over the years, three within the second year. Who had transferred, separated, asked him for advice in lieu of a father, or brother?

They waited for him to speak. He stepped across the corridor and they moved aside. He pressed the wall comm to the bridge.

‘Yes, Sir?’

‘Please broadcast this comm for the entire ship,’ he looked up at the people readjusting their positions to face him. He took a breath and began, ‘This is your Captain speaking.’

‘I know,’ he said, ‘by now you’re all aware that our course heading has changed. We are currently four point six hours away from Vulcan. The truth is, that we have not been a functional vessel for some time now. In reality, we have been off-course for months. Under our probation, which you are all aware of, we have been a glorified cargo ship. I have...seen your requests for me to resign as Captain, and I will be doing that as soon as we reach orbit in Vulcan.'

He dropped his hand to his side, hand curling into a fist like a dead arachnid. Another path opened around him.

* * *

On the bridge, he was greeted with silence. He stepped to Uhura’s console, ‘I need to find a way to get planetside without alerting Starfleet.’

She was so busy logging away the mutiny letters that she did not look up for a moment. She considered it and turned to him.

‘Contact their base when we arrive, and report me—’

‘—Captain—’

He tugged at his collar with a effaced smile, _not your Captain_. ‘It’s alright, Nyota. File a mutiny letter,’ he turned up and looked at everyone else on the bridge, already looking toward him, ‘I need everyone to write their own. While they sort through them, I will be taking a shuttle-craft down.’

‘Sir, Vulcan has a very sharp defence system, they would be waiting to arrest you as soon as you touch down.’

‘Yes, I’m counting on that,’ he said, stepped down to Sulu and leaned into his console, typing, ‘Here are the coordinates. I want you to tie orbit to this point.’

‘Yes, Sir.’

Not much left to do then, but wait, meet the eyes of his crew-turned-friends. Sit the conn, attempting to memorise the feeling of it and remind himself that it had never been more than a sum of its parts; meant far less if he looked over his shoulder and did not see Spock. Whatever the Enterprise was, it was not the purpose of his life, but a symptom of that purpose. Live and die by the ideals of Starfleet — the system was built on sound foundations.Now, he could see no way to survive with himself if he did not go after Spock, the boy; the only probable semblance of his future.

Time eventually passed, little or no talking, coordinating, throwing one another worried looks. One by one the remaining bridge crew took up their PADDs and wrote out their mutinies. Jim wondered if some part of them might mean it. In a stupor, he read through several of those already filed by the rest of the ship.

Common terms: _willful deception, personal gain, inappropriate use of power_ — McCoy burst onto the bridge like a firecracker. Jim glanced at the chronometer: two hours to Vulcan. Back to McCoy’s face, red, teeth gnashed, a PADD clenched in his grip as if it were a crowbar. He brought with him a smell of fresh and dashed sweat and antiseptic.

‘This!’ he stood in front of him and half-yelled, ‘And this is what you get after five damn years, Jim! Five years and a half dozen times of surviving by the skin of your teeth — broken bones, concussions, strandings. A mutiny is one thing, but this?’

McCoy nearly shuddered with the force of his words. Jim swallowed. He stood up and lay a hand on his shoulder, felt the rage-heated vibrations coming through him.

‘Bones, it’s alright—’

‘But I’m not talking about the mutiny,’ he shoved the edge of the PADD to his breastplate.

And Jim read,

_END OF THE WATCH? by Graham Flores — Since the Enterprise was put on probation last month there have been many theories regarding the ship’s demise and potential reasons for its swift descent as the proverbial head of the explorative sector. However, redacted information has until now protected the ship and her command from scrutiny. Concurrent to the probation was First Officer Spock’s suspension and the ship restriction to Federation space. There are many citable reasons this could occur, yet the most likely seemed to be a major misstep by Captain James T. Kirk. Kirk, who is a second-generation Captain (his father, Captain George Kirk was Captain of the USS Kelvin for eight years), was promoted to the Enterprise command at the age of 35 — the youngest Captain ever commissioned by Starfleet. At the time many suspected a hot streak of nepotism, but after two years at the helm, Kirk proved his mettle._

_Yet in recent years, the Enterprise’s streak of successful missions has been slowing to the Starfleet standard, scientific breakthroughs have been middling and incomparable to the otherworldly achievements of the first of the five-year mission. Complacency comes with age, but as it were, luck seemed to be involved too. Dwindling, at that._

_A revelation has now broken the fog of Enterprise’s fate and it appears that at the centre of it is once again the ship’s notoriously fickle Captain. Subspace messages have been pouring in from lower-deck crew regarding his recently erratic and destructive behaviour. For obvious reasons, our sources have opted to remain anonymous, one ensign wrote, ‘…often Captain Kirk will make a hasty decision or a personal one, and we pay the professional price, or at the worst times, a personal price’. A Lieutenant reported, ‘Over the past six months there’s been a sense of disillusionment amongst the crew’. In whatever wording these revelations have come, they all point to unsustainable leadership practices. It is, at this time, easy to resort to hearsay and rumours, but it appears inevitable that Captain Kirk may be decommissioned on the basis of a majority mutiny and ousted from the USS Enterprise…_

‘It was inevitable, Bone.’

‘Was it?’ McCoy seethed. 'Mutiny is one thing, but selling you out to the press?'

Jim stepped past him and pushed the PADD back into his arms. He turned on the spot, without aim. It is what it is, he thought. No return and no return wanted. It only steeled him in his resolve.

‘Don’t you give a damn?’

‘What would you have me say?’ Jim’s voice snapped out of him like a rubber-band, volume exploding, all heads on the bridge turning, McCoy’s brows twitched. Jim covered his face in his hands briefly, regained himself, ‘There is nothing I can do about this. Write your own report up, we’re not far now.’

‘Like hell I will. I’m coming with you,’ he said. ‘Matter of fact, you aren’t the Captain now — so I get to make that choice.’

He looked at him and digested the matter of years, the harsh and cutting conversations in a razor pile between them. He said, ‘So suit yourself, Doctor,’ voice all gravel and knuckles.

Coordinates on approach with Sulu’s face an inlaid wax mould of concentration, calling out indices and alpha, Romeo, Juliet. Uhura, in a stream of perforation blocking up subspace channels with the hundreds of mutiny actions and calls, Scotty burning energy from the engines for the non-interference shields, Chekov diligently scanning airspace. McCoy — McCoy with a vice-grip on the back of the conn, and Jim amongst them all, at the mercy of their friendship, or maybe, their friendships for Spock. He tried, in a flight of fancy, to see if he could feel him in the ancient Vulcan terms as they came closer to their destination. If his and Spock’s minds had conceded, so would their souls. But nothing ever came. Just the anxious pinging of his heart which felt confectionary in the jar of his chest.

‘Five minutes, Sir,’ Sulu reported. ‘I would get to the shuttle bay now.’

‘Alright, Sulu, thank you,’ he looked around, and felt there was no space for a goodbye, regretted that he had not initiated one earlier. He stood up, turned to the turbo and McCoy followed on his heels as if mistrusting that he would vanish to thin air.

Uhura looked up from the console before he exited. She smiled at him in a way that was not a smile, she nodded conspiratorially: go ahead and bring our friend back.

The shuttle deck was deserted. The crew were likely milling around the mess halls, quarters, rec rooms; gathering haunts of mutineers, come too far to turn back, awaiting new assignments. Bitterly or maybe in relief. They took the _Galileo_ with Sulu counting them out over the speakers, wished them luck. At long last, the hangar doors exhaled open over Vulcan, and the sun came into their eyes. An inkblot of space’s infinite darkness lay over the red-eye; god of fire, the same thought in their minds thousands of years after it had occurred to the ancient Romans. It ran rivers of deserts and metal forges beneath them, the heat seeming to peel off this corner of the world like steam. Jim piloted them lower, keeping a close eye on the radar, the controls — he only had one shot to get it right.

It wasn’t long before they were joined by small security joggers escorting them, two, then four, at each corner of the _Galileo._ The subs began to flood with warning communiqués, but McCoy clapped it off under his palm like a fly. Jim rose a brow at him.

‘Not like they were saying anything we didn’t know,’ McCoy grunted.

Vulcan continued to unfold until it was etherised under them at the height that commercial travellers and hovercars hit their altitude limits. No traffic, and to their east the shining, silver and ochre shingles of the nearest city. It blinked like rhinestones and glasswork. Paths of dunes and alluvial plains wove down from mountains as knitting coming loose in waves. The Vulcan ocean to the distant north, under a pall of yellow, and in ripples conspiring to blind them as if it was scattered with mirror shards. Hovering lower, the _Galileo_ expelled hard, burning jet fuel to the last. In perfect coordination, in dance with the other crafts, they dropped lower. They all landed like broken feathers in the ancestral S’chn T’Gai acreage. Jim had cut it so close to the coordinates that the shuttlecraft's nose stood less than half a dozen meters from the back door.

He flipped the engine off, McCoy exhaled a breath Jim didn’t know he’d been holding. He stood up in front of the yoke and waited. Again, he had one shot. Stood, as long as it took for dust particles to come down around them. The guards that had followed them exited their vehicles and took up arms around the shuttlecraft. The moment seemed to be coming and going quickly, but Jim stood firm. He waited for a familiar figure to step up to the glass from inside. Majority of what he could see was a milky reflection of the _Galileo,_ vague host of sparse furniture beyond it.

Jim thought, if Spock were here, I would already know. He would have come out by now.

McCoy grabbed his arm, pointing. A figure, smaller than expected approached the glass, joined in a hurried step by a second, which appeared to be attempting to dissuade the first.

‘Time to go,’ Jim disengaged the door. It arched open like the claw of an attack ready crustacean — Bergilia II, Spock holding a creature in the pittance of his palm and protecting it in a cage of his fingers. Every instance, every small thing was haunted. Jim stepped down to the soil on which Spock had grown, and looked around, through the barricade of ready soldiers and their aimed phasers, at the battleground of so many of the stories he’d heard. He could imagine the slight boy, nose dribbling blood and snot, kicking sand, a shying sehlat following him. If Spock were here, he would know it. And he turned to face the man who had lied to him so easy. Through the glass, he levelled his eyes Sarek’s, it was Amanda who stood beside him, both jaws stern, shoulders rigid. One of the airspace guards was saying something to him, but Jim put his hands up and did not move. McCoy followed suite.

A piece of light slithered across the glass as Amanda pushed through. Carefully, she stepped past the guards, seeming to demagnetise them out of her way. The silence fell, the wind seethed, some loose particle flit to Jim’s eye, he felt his hair being carded through, the dust staining him. It was already becoming hard to breathe.

‘I didn’t think you would come,’ she said, and to give away her humanity just one trembling syllable. Sarek stopped several feet behind her, and she looked back at him, expectant.

Before Sarek could speak, Jim said, ‘Isn’t my coming all this way, under these circumstances worth a single conversation to you, Ambassador?’

* * *

Two guards were stationed inside and the rest were dismissed after Jim signed an affidavit: if they intended to arrest and detain him, he would not resist. A gloved guard patted him down for weapons and found none. A stolid moment of taking seats running the lengths of the table, Jim and McCoy on one side, and Sarek and Amanda on the other.It seemed to Jim as if he was seeing them again for the first time. He thought of Spock’s blood running in Sarek’s veins and vice versa. He could find no resemblance in them to their son.

‘I rather cut to the chase,’ he said, ‘Where is Spock?’

Sarek’s lip curled, smelling some sour conversation. Jim put his hands together on the table in front of him and waited. No answer forthcoming. An ambassador at a loss for words was suddenly a frightening prospect.

‘Sarek…’ Amanda began and was shot down by a stern look.

‘I do not know,’ Sarek said.

‘How is that possible?’ McCoy could not hold his tongue.

Sarek struck with the offence spilt his story. Then came the story of Spock’s arrival with the boy. The first tenacious days in Kir, the medical and psychological evaluations, T’Pau’s assessment and and and — and Jim, in the next part of the story felt as if he had been launched over a cliff face and into the maw of an abyss.

‘—the Romulan assailants took the boy when they en route from Kir,’ Sarek did not say another word, sinking to something. Maybe shame, or something Jim was now too numb to understand.

‘And Spock?’ it was difficult to keep his voice from dipping.

Amanda went on, ‘I had been away until that day. When I arrived the house was heavily guarded — they had been looking for Spock for hours after finding the hovercraft wreck. He’d been walking home using subterranean routes,’ a smile blossomed and withered in an instance, ‘same ones he had uncovered when he was a boy. I think he was worried that he was being followed. The sun was up by the time he arrived. When it went down, he was gone again.’

Jim looked toward the front entrance of the house. He tried to imagine Spock tumbling in, haggard, but safe. Enraged? He had seen him angry, he had seen him in every shade of emotion he could conceive and somehow the visage of the corridor still provided a blank.

‘So you,’ and Jim thought carefully about his wording, ‘Misdirected me.’

‘Tell me, Kirk,’ it seemed Sarek had had his answer waiting, ‘is the demise you find yourself in desirable? Just to know what has become of Spock? Helpless, as we are. In any case, some of my colleagues and I believed that Spock would return to the Enterprise to request your help.’

‘And he didn’t,’ he half-snapped. ‘All this time I could have been useful—’

‘We suspect where he is now, but that information remains classified. Furthermore, there is no concrete proof of his passage…of his arrival,’ Sarek bulldozed over him, ‘Or if he survived either.’

Jim’s eyes flickered to Amanda’s face. She had become a stone. It seemed likely that a mother would know if her son was dead even if he was lightyears away. But no: his own mother was none the wiser when Sam died. Disbelieving still, when Jim told her as much — and Aurelian — all she suddenly knew was here comes Peter, orphaned.

‘Please,’ he said, and didn’t know how to beg favours while he had one foot in a Vulcan prison, and the other in a Court Martial hearing. He had nothing to leverage except affection and fear.

McCoy grabbed his arm as if to stop him from falling to his proverbial knees. Jim looked at Sarek closely, ‘Ambassador, you know as well as I do the risks. And that whatever the force of Starfleet’s operation is now in regards to the eugenics issue it isn’t to find Spock. It’s under your purview to let me go after him.’

‘You are no longer the Captain of the Enterprise,’ he said. ‘What’s more, you are a fugitive civilian wanted by Starfleet under charges of rightful mutiny. So I ask again, is your present demise desirable?’

Amanda glanced at Sarek, but she addressed Jim, ‘He knew you’d follow him. Eventually.’

‘Amanda,’ came Sarek’s terse warning.

She glanced at him calmly and stood, ‘You have done as you thought best, and now I will, Sarek.’

Jim could see the punch of muscles in his jaw. He thought of his heart, heart problems, lodged in a leftward crevasse of his ribs. That holding cell.

‘Come with me,’ Amanda tilted her chin up at Jim, eyes shining and resolute. Sarek’s head dipped, and in a wave of unbidden, nauseating memory Jim remembered Kerrius. Gouts of blood, knobs of sliced flesh — he suddenly realised where Spock must be. Felt certain to the last fibre of his being.

Amanda led him down the corridor, passing a series of wide and high doors, and stopping near the end where the apex of the hall curved left; stairs running down; a subterranean muzzle of coolness. The door was ajar, and Jim knew without knowing that this must be Spock’s room. Amanda carefully pushed open the door as if she was worried about disrupting the whiff of dust particles. Late morning, red sun streaming through terrace doors and across the floor. Everything was practical: perfectly made bed, dresser, wardrobe, en suite with the door shut. Finally, a desk with a lamp perched overhead, studiously pristine except for a single, aged piece of paper folded in half, and three of the four holotapes Jim had managed to send Spock stacked on top of one another. He had promised the boy and he had kept his promise, he realised, until he had no longer believed that anyone was receiving them.

He looked at Amanda so that he would not have to look at anything else and said, ‘I know where he is.’

Her eyes shot up from her own reverie to his. She put her hands together tightly, reenacting some accrued form of Vulcan propriety. She blinked several times, gathering the correct phrases, words, ‘Sarek is unwilling to believe that you and Spock may have secretly bonded. Have you?’

Jim blinked, ‘Why? Why is it such an offensive possibility to him?’

She crossed her arms and looked down at her feet; house shoes, flat and practical heels in auburn. Was the thought of his love for Spock detestable under this roof? She turned and sat on the edge of the bed, shrugging, ‘It would be another slight to Sarek, possibly...bigger than Spock joining Starfleet instead of the VSA. It was not a reach to assume that you and Spock would never live on Vulcan and that, would be the end of a…a very long line. The line, which Sarek feels entirely responsible for burning out,’ she huffed a bitter laugh, ‘A burden of thought he accepted when he married me. Which he defied when Spock was born…which after a fashion, does not seem meant to be after all.’

Arcane concerns, then. Some old preservation of existence in blood down the ages. The boy, by this logic, must have seemed to Sarek like an abomination of his future. 

‘We’re not bonded,’ Jim said tightly. If Spock loved him, it would only be one more in a list of disappointing decisions he had made. No control inside him; he wondered when Spock had decided to love him. Jim had never made an active choice, nor had it happened to him outside of his will. A blend of fate and faith and deep melancholy. He couldn't parse the components. He couldn't parse Spock's future from his own. 

‘Then how do you know where he is?' Amanda asked. 

‘There was a message,’ he said, ‘from a merchant we met on Farius Prime. He gave us coordinates...in any case, I don’t doubt that Sarek is already aware. Suspects, that he is there.’

Amanda nodded and stood up. Sarek or Amanda, surely she knew too. She stepped across the room and took the folded paper from the table. It was offered to him between the delicate vice of her fingers. Something in her grip, something in the brief tug before he accepted the note, told him that it was for his eyes only, ‘He left this for you.’

‘You said you’d do what you know is best. What is that?’

‘Me?’ she asked, ‘the Human amongst Vulcans? Whose son could be dead, or worse? I want you to go after him.’

It was only after her footsteps had faded down the corridor that Jim dared to look down. The edges of the paper were soft-torn from some notebook. Flipping it, he found arcane sketches of species of reptiles in wheatgrass. A cross-hatched organisation of life, darker shadows by the underbelly of graphite. He opened the paper unhurriedly, and found inside, like a blast of air to a drowning man, Spock’s handwriting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahh okay so maybe fortnightly uploads will be more the pace, thanks to everyone still reading. Your comments and messages are so motivating! Also, I've changed my user from vvlcant to tprung, so just a heads up.


	22. Steady Keel

‘Any personal possessions?’

McCoy glanced at Jim. He slipped off his class signet ring and passed it along.

‘Would you like to take this with you?’

McCoy nodded. Jim remembered Spock’s letter in his pocket. He carefully took it out and handed it over.

‘Very well,’ the Vulcan attendant carefully moved to the high table and put both things into a clear bag and sealed them.

Jim watched him move to the centre of the room by the travel pod and open a central compartment between the inlay moulds. He returned with a folded set of clothes and handed them each a starchy, sleet-grey outfit.

‘Only wear the item you have been provided,’ he said, ‘I will return shortly.’

McCoy’s eyes followed the Vulcan all the way out of the room. Trickle-blue eyes landed on Jim.

‘Last chance, Bones.’

‘If you’re going, I’m going.’

‘It’s one thing to go,’ Jim muttered, letting the opaque outfit unfold and hang from his hands, ‘but _this_ is another.’

‘Maybe to you,’ McCoy sat on the low bench running the wall behind them and began to pull off his boots. ‘To me, this doesn’t feel much worse than climbing into the transporter and letting is dissemble my particles.’

There was a comforting illogic in that. Jim looked down at the jumpsuit; it had a velcro opening from gut to sternum and elasticised at the wrists and ankles. No Starfleet insignia, nor VSA. Nothing. Jim walked over to the transportation pod and made a couple of laps. It was a sleek unit in matte-grey, eight by eight feet by five feet deep. Inside there were the general impressions of where he and McCoy would lay while they were in suspended animation for the length of their journey, a foot apart. Above and below were a set of blue-white lights that shone when the lid of the unit was disengaged. Above their heads, at the back of the craft were simplified, and one-use warp coils; the travel capsule carried as much dilithium as it would take to reach their destination, plus a little extra. The navigation system was a robust keypad just for input coordinates. Opposite that were the temperature controls for putting them into their suspended state and withdrawing them from it. Finally, at the foot of the craft lay the locking mechanism: two metal arms that would dig up into the lid when it was placed and entomb the travellers.

If ever there was time to be claustrophobic, it was now.

Jim briskly walked back to the bench and sat down. McCoy was already overlaying the velcro and patting it down on his chest. His bare feet made impressions on the dark tiled floor. The white lights from overhead did unkind work. Here they were, they were two almost-old-men or men-certainly-into-their-prime, on their way to do work that would belay even the young and stupid. Jim undressed evenly while McCoy did his own round of the pod. He knocked a toe against it in thought.

‘I used to dream about a long sleep,’ he murmured as he stood looking into the casket like a wishing well. ‘Some Alpha shifts I woke up, or at the end of a long day, and I would fantasise about sleeping for a long, long time. Like this.’

Jim stood up and pulled the suit over his shoulders, ‘Here’s your chance.’

‘I did always assumed I would wake up from that sleep, but this one,’ he nodded to the pod. ‘Not a sure thing, is it?’

‘As you pointed out, the transporter was hardly a sure thing,’ Jim tamped the velcro up to his neck. The rest of the material felt invisible against his skin. It was as if he was standing naked. He remembered that he hadn’t taken his socks off and sat down again. Peeled them off and bunched them into his boots.

‘No such thing as a sure thing.’

McCoy sat down beside him, and they waited in silence. Jim’s mind felt as empty and flat as a water-worn stone.

‘Who thought this could be a way to live,’ McCoy murmured, ‘I certainly never thought _this_ , would be my life.’

Before Jim could ask what he meant the doors slid open and their operator glided through.

‘Are you ready?’

They followed him and the three stood around the pod in a loose wreath. There were no further instructions. No Human had ever been taught how to sleep nor to die and this was no exception. Some drifting thought of Grecian funeral piers, bringing coins to place on his own eyes.

‘What side of the bed do you want?’ McCoy raised a brow at him.

Jim chuckled and climbed into the left side. He scooted to fit the mould before lying down and noted the strip-lighting on the ceiling. He said, ‘This is going to be the longest vacation of my career.’

McCoy was settling in on his right. Their operator rapidly coordinated some figures on his PADD.

‘I can’t believe I didn’t think of this for you when-‘ McCoy stopped abruptly.

They lay with the centre panel separating them. The cool mould pressed into Jim’s back evenly and sealed against him as he let go of the masses of himself ‘—when I was the Captain of the Enterprise?’

‘You’re making it sound like it was years ago.’

‘Certainly feels that way.’

‘You will be again.’

‘Maybe it’s time to think up a new way of living.’

The operator stepped up by the edge and asked for their arms. He injected them and placed two magnetised pieces, the size of pennies on both of their temples in turn. Jim took a deep breath. He could feel himself getting cold from the inside out. A was cavern freezing up in him. By contrast, his outside seemed to be becoming putty, warm, melted to fill the mould as if he was made of dough. His last thought was his mother’s baking. The empty windowsills in Iowa gathering dust.

* * *

1.

James Kirk Heart-rate: 15 bpm  
"Leonard McCoy: 12 bpm  
Exterior Hull Temperature: -240 Degrees Celsius

Iowa, somewhere — Joe Lafferty’s cornfield with the corn for the season already reaped. Jim lay pillowed in the husks that had been left behind and stared up from the past. His present hurtled on, thirty-seven years aged. The pod trembled in the open space and reflected light from stars that blurred past. The closest it ever came to another vessel was within a lightyear of an Orion merchant ship. It was Christmas somewhere. When did the galaxy expand? Why hadn’t Jim noticed? He dreamed of Spock’s arms as large as the wheels of the Milky Way and he, in them. Made from them, returned to them.

An eleven-year-old child living on I-45 Starfleet colony noted from her backyard a satellite in the sky. It was not uniform with the others. It was not a shooting star. She ran inside and brought her brother out, dragging him by the wrist.

‘What’s that?’ she pointed where it had appeared in the sky.

But the pod containing Jim and McCoy was already out of sight.

2.

James Kirk Heart-rate: 10 bpm  
Leonard McCoy: 14 bpm  
Exterior Hull Temperature: -210 Degrees Celsius

_Jim — I know it would be no less futile to dissuade you from continuing than if I were looking for you. Could you dissuade me? I do not think you could. For the first time, I cannot offer my dearest Captain advice nor assessment. So, into the dying of the light. To me, regret has no logical function, but the fact remains that our goodbye was unsatisfactory. This is perhaps my feeble attempt to correct it. Could I do it again and therefore not at all? There was a parcel of time in which reality had occurred to us, but appeared to be under control. I read a passage from Whitman out loud, you fell asleep. This moment was so complete that it perturbed me. I dressed and sat by the orchids. Again and again, I thought, “I stop somewhere waiting for you.” I remained so still the orchids ceased to move. The thought of you is a thread that spools through every moment. I do not know where it commenced, I can anticipate no end — Spock_

No end. Stop. Heart in the throat. Stop. They had been fused together long before making love. Stop. Jim’s cardiogram was more like a dead man’s than a living one. Somewhere, Spock stopped mid-stride and stood very still and looked into the skies over the sleety water. He could not see anything of note.

Several moments later the pod narrowly missed a collision with a passing comet. Spindrifts of space dust sifted over the thick exterior glassing and strummed over Jim’s unconscious face under the pod’s thick plexiglass. Somewhere a star went supernova and took with it the burgeoning civilisation of Uqbar Tlön.

Spock continued walking.

3.

James Kirk Heart-rate: 11 bpm  
Leonard McCoy: 12 bpm  
Exterior Hull Temperature: -80, -79, -73 Degrees Celsius

A comet was falling over the Aeneid. Madhavan noted it first while he was sitting on the central cabin’s roof in the metal-licked night. Wishing deeply for a cigarette and Radha. He watched it grow closer and hotter in the darkness. When the pod flared on-orbit entry he exhaled, stood up and dusted his hands off on the back of his jumpsuit. He put two fingers into his mouth and whistled. If they were lucky it was an early deposit of rations.

A few people from his crew emerged on the deck below. The ship bobbed and clinked and the water lapped. They gazed up at him with the half-sleeping, half-haunted whiteness of their eyes. A spaceship crew on a ragged metal trawler. They tugged at their slicker collars and went about a slow, meditated preparation for potential doom. Fire could fall from the sky at any moment. Madhavan climbed down.

* * *

Waking up was like no waking he had ever known. A conscious birth. Arriving gurgling and gasping as waterfall or acid-fall pricked him. The mould was filling up and sloshing around his body where he’d laid. Jim opened his eyes into the darkness and faces became clearer: peering over and into him. _How long? How long?_ He was not in charge of his own faculties. All was molten lead. He was aware of a rocking sensation around him. Aware of the hot fingers reaching for his cold body and peeling him out, rolling him into elbow-bends and coaxing his useless limbs toward a dim interior. In and out of it. In patches. He was on a sea, somewhere, his sights reeled but he knew that McCoy was being carried close behind. Human touch. _How long? How long? Spock?_

Everyone was dressed darkly. Something cracking and weight-bearing hulked in the nothingness and there were shouts and voices but he couldn’t discern which mouths they fell from. He was manhandled and ladled into warmth before he lost consciousness.

Long spaces between waking and sleeping. An eternal night in different shades. He was aware of McCoy’s voice beside him, ‘Really?’

‘Yes. He drowned two days ago.’

‘Good timing, then?’

‘That depends. Are you a good physician?’

Jim departed again. He didn’t dream.

He woke up in a cabin tossed by waves. Plashes of water boxed him into a narrow passage in his own head. A man was sitting across from him on a narrow cot with a laconic look on his face while he read from a PADD balanced on his knee. He sensed Jim’s gaze and looked at him. The summation of him was deeply arched brows and a greying beard; dark eyes that were maybe a hundred layers removed from any real feeling or reaction.

‘Are you the Captain?’ Jim croaked. It seemed as if he had forgotten how to breathe and speak at the same time.

The man nodded, he looked back down at his PADD.

Jim blinked, swallowed, conscious of everything that had once been an automatic action. It seemed as if he were learning to exist again, materialising. Unbidden, came the thought of the boy.

‘Where?’ he said, putting his head down and letting the words flow out. He spent a moment catching his breath.

‘Welcome to Aeneid.’

Jim lolled onto one elbow, then the other, pushing up, sitting, leaning into the cold metal wall beside him. The Captain looked at him and titled his head to one side like he was seeing him for the first time.

 _Starfleet_ , the word pooled in the dip of Jim’s tongue like bile and rolled back down. He blinked, ‘McCoy?’

‘The Doctor is above deck with the rest of the crew,’ said this Human and perhaps-not-Starfleet Captain, ‘But you — Captain Kirk, have taken a while to recover from the suspended animation.’

‘Alright. Then, you know who we are.’

‘Yes, but we never expected to have the cream of Starfleet crop among us. Here, of all places,’ he made himelf laugh an earthy chortle somewhere under his epiglottis.

‘You’re Starfleet.’

‘Yes, unfortunately,’ the Captain cleared his throat. ‘The question is - are you _still_ Starfleet?’

’No,’ Jim opened his eyes, breathed and breathed. ‘Not at the moment anyway.’

‘I wonder what you did,’ he said it in the way that doesn’t seek an answer. He stood up promptly and the silver chain around his neck, the pendant on its end flashed in Jim’s eyes. He was leaving, PADD tucked under his arm and without a goodbye.

‘Captain —‘

Jim waited for him to turn, to meet his eyes.

‘Commander Spock, is he here?’

‘No.’

‘But was he here before?’

‘There is some food on-deck if you’re hungry,’ he said instead, already turning to leave.

Jim exhaled and decided Starfleet or not, he didn’t trust Madhavan one bit.

Soon, a young man came around and dropped off some clothes for him. Thermal underwear, a roll of black wool socks, cracked boots, thick jumpsuit half-corduroy and half-cotton and a pair of boots greening and scuffed grey. Pre-used. He couldn’t help but wonder if he was stepping into, tying up, the slightly too-small boots of a deadman. The underbelly of the boat was a simple corridor leading to the surface, and he emerged, shielding his eyes for a long time against the light, until eventually, he began easing his fingers away, one at a time from his eyes and his brow.

Jim stood on the trawler’s deck staring into ocean-water the colour of licked sterling silver. He leaned onto his elbows on the railing and squinted into the horizon of Aeneid. The mainland was hidden under sheathes of fog and wool-snagged clouds, getting unclearer steadily as they approached the small island which had been established as Starfleet’s hold.

Wind spitting in his eyes he shivered involuntarily. It was too cold for Spock in this place. He glanced over his shoulder at Captain Madhavan on the far-side of the deck, conversing with a couple of his own crew. Well-liked, if not steely, everyone else just him called _Maddy_. The rest of the crew were ragtag and bolstered after a year in this place with wide hollow-deep eyes blanked and brimming.

McCoy caught his eyes coming up from the belly of the ship. He was carrying a poppy-red med-kit, clumping in the boots one-size too big. There were no synthesisers on board and none on the island.

‘You don’t look much worse for wear, Jim,’ he said, looking him over with the eyes of a Doctor, and a flash-grin of his old friend.

‘Apparently, you’re better, considering you came out of it sooner than I did.’

‘Told you it didn’t phase me much,’ he said, ‘Nothing to it, I checked you over before you were up, and everything is fine. Just needed the sleep.’

‘Normal for everything to ache?’ he rubbed his neck. The small exertion of crossing a corridor and climbing half a dozen stairs been too much, though it had only been a couple of hours.

‘Sure, I got that in spadefuls,’ McCoy unzipped the bag and withdrew a hypo, ‘this’ll straighten you out. Step right up, Dr McCoy good-time cure.’

Jim stood still for his ministration.A skin-deep cool spread through him and numbed the ache, ease-down to mellowing his muscles when he rolled his shoulders. McCoy was a quick draw, he closed the bag up and leaned upon the railing beside him, elbow to elbow.

‘I haven’t been able to pull a word out of anyone about Spock,’ he said, ‘If he was - is here…’

‘They know,’ Jim said under his breath. Taken on a low wind into McCoy’s ear. ‘Madhavan knows. Spock was here.’

‘But what reason would they possibly have that from us, Jim?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know, but Spock is here, somewhere on this planet.’

‘How can you be sure?'

Jim inhaled and felt the handrail-metal cold sting his sinuses. There was no way to explain to McCoy the line attached somewhere under his ribs tugging in staccato; the hotness in the back-bottom of his skull.

‘I just know,’ he said.

They came to know the Starfleet corner of the Aeneid, an island the shape of a liver, was rounded by a salt pan. On their arrival, the metal edge of the trawler was anchored into the beach-silt while around it the ice-grey water suckled the boatbelly. Jim and McCoy watched from the deck as the crew began to dismount from a ladder and followed suit onto the pristine and white salt crystallites. They followed down the line, each step crunching. Jim could taste salt gathering on his lips by the wind

In this place, things decayed faster, were time-gnawed and swallowed and grey-skinned faster. McCoy, who had been temporarily hung up with the Doctor’s post, discreetly scanned the area with his tricorder as he walked ahead of Jim. He glanced over his shoulder and flashed him a serious look.

 _Not a living thing_ , he meant, _Dead._

Jim looked toward the barracks rising from the flat, dark plateau; white-washed buildings and mauve military-tough tents, circling a large water tanker. Water was the god of this place and not much else.

Madhavan caught up to Jim from the backline. He fell into step with him and said, ‘When I first saw your pod I thought it was a food drop off.’

‘I’m sorry to disappoint you,’ Jim said.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Madhavan said flatly, ‘I just hope you’re not averse to being a little hungry a lot of the time.’

Jim smiled wistfully and didn’t answer, he stared down at his loaned boots already dusted near-white.

‘What’s on the mainland?’ he asked suddenly. He had found over the years of boondoggle diplomacy that two tactics at once were better than one. Blindside with one attack with the other.

‘Mines, laboratories, armament stockpiles,’ he said, ‘everything the merchants bring in. I’m sorry to inform you, Captain, that us being here is nothing more than an information collection outpost.’

‘How long have you been here?’

‘A years, give or take.’

Jim looked into his eyes and saw the same hollow and heavy truth as carried by the rest of the crew. He had the appearance of a man already starved beyond recognition or repatriation and it had nothing to do with food. He realised he had seen the same look in the mirror before he departed he Enterprise. Madhavan jogged ahead and caught up to one of his crew. Jim bandied forward to McCoy.

‘You hear all that?’

‘You want me to eavesdrop?’

‘Bones.’

‘Yes.’

‘And?’

‘Hell, Jim — the sooner we get out of here the better. With Spock and the kid.’

‘That’s the plan, Doctor.’

‘Better get to it then.’

They were assigned the last tent left in the stores of the small colony. It took a few hours to assemble and Jim chafed his fingers as the cold snapped them and the tent clasps caught and shaved whispers of skin from his palms. By the time he gathered around the dismal fire on the far north-side his hands felt like sheered bone, grated cartilage, red-blue with the cold and fingernails bruised.

He sat down on a squat bench by a man who didn’t look at him even once. Palms up he stared at the outcome of his labour. Tarsus drifted across his mind when he looked at the horizon the uncertainty of Spock’s safety gnawed at him

McCoy offered him a plate a short time later; beans and some sort of grain, mixed and sticky. When he lifted his fork it came away with long stretch-strings of its consistency. Just a handful of it. Two of that per day was the ration, McCoy informed him. Jim dug in and tasted nothing.

Around the fire, a hum of conversation picked up as the night advanced. It seemed that in darkness the barren reality of this place was cushioned. And so the preferred state was late-to-morning-sits, which were roughly four hours, and long day time sleeps. Windows unwanted. Still, the conversation was no more substantive than the muttering of half-hearted stories from home. As the darkness swallowed them utterly a silence ebbed in and stayed. See, twenty people, bedraggled and staring empty-eyed into the fire.

Jim watched the licking flames and Madhavan visible just across. In this view, he was a floating head suspended by fire and soot and smoke. He began to sing after the silence had settled for a long time, a humming in his throat which blooming to words in a language Jim couldn’t decipher. The rest of the crew, still as corpses, began to shut-eyes and angle their heads. The reality of the situation was revealed to Jim: he and McCoy had arrived at the world’s end, weary two amongst dead-already two dozen. Missing home so much that you could no longer distinguish between what was you and what the indelible voids that had opened up inside you.

And by sun-up they had each drifted away to their tents or between their adobe walls. In the early flush of light on the horizon, Jim could finally see clear across the water, and without the mist, the metal arms of old Earth pumpjacks were visible and seesawing mineral from the Aeneid in uncountable numbers. So many that if he unfocused his eyes they appeared like a mirage of rapacious birds, mating or fighting. There was the ring of metal in the air, but he couldn’t tell if it was imagined or not.

There remained only Madhavan, himself and McCoy leaned down and out and slumbering by that time. The Captain was unblinking into the snuffed embers, his shoulders drawn up and collar stiff, arms barricaded across his knees. Jim stood and dusted off his pants, monolithic salt-shaker as everything was. He realised that he was desperately thirsty when he tried to swallow in preparation for speaking. He kneeled down in front of him.

‘Captain, I need to speak to you.’

‘Waited long enough,’ Madhavan said, immovable, with his eyes in the dead distance. ‘What is it?’

‘I’m here to find Commander Spock.’

‘And what was he supposedly here to find?’

‘I apologise but that’s classified.’

Madhavan nodded thoughtfully and shifted his gaze and gun barrelled them to Jim’s. He teethed his lips, pressed them together before continuing, ‘I know Commander Spock by his Starfleet accolades. I know him by the Enterprise’s reputation — which, when I was posted here, you were still in command of. Now…I don’t recognise you, not-a-Captain. And I am unaware of any Vulcan who would abandon his post, much less enter unauthorised territory.’

Jim swallowed his tongue a raw paperweight in sandpaper. His nostrils felt cauterised inside out, seething with the brackish air. An uncomfortable and painful tightening began in his sternum and travelled until it had electrified even his bladder. He felt ill.

‘He was here,’ he said with his voice the roll of a boulder in gravel, ‘I may not be the Captain of the Enterprise at the moment, but I know damn well when I’m being lied to.’

Captain of the Captain, Madhavan, blinked infuriatingly and put out his hands in the universal gesture for the unknown. ‘I don’t care enough,’ he said, ‘to lie to you.’

What transpired next came and went in a split second: a slow wind snaked in and rearranged Madhavan hair on top of his head; Jim was inexplicably reminded of the orchids; the fire popped; and then, as if the chemistry of this blink-in-time had led to a chemical reaction, Jim ignited and exploded in a fit of exhaustion and rage.

He sprang across at Madhavan, rolling him into the brine dust and dirt, digging his heel in and vice-curling his collar in his fists. The Captain went down easy as butter, collapsing under him, legs still lax, face in resigned if not depressed surprise. Jim could hear McCoy’s feet crunching toward him, yelping in his sleepy voice. Madhavan had arched brows fading with age, sad-kind eyes, teeth that were just shy of truly uneven.

‘I don’t know where Spock is,’ he said, and put his hands over Jim’s and pressed them. ‘I can’t tell you.’

Jim panted twice like a gored dog. His feet kick-skidded and shredded back a strip of salt-crystals. McCoy’s wiry arms wrenched him by the back of his standard-issue loan jacket and he was pulled off messily, grating away, letting go. Madhavan lay as he was for a long time. Long enough for McCoy to prop Jim to his feet and say stern words to him which were lost under a flat whistle going through one ear, piercing his brain, and out the other.

McCoy pulled Jim around as if he were handling the steering of a too-big, too-broken ship and they saw a couple of heads emerging from the slept-in tents. Eyes blinking at them buggy and tired. Jim took a searing breath and wondered if he had imagined that he felt Spock’s presence here. If he had imagined it all. He had half a mind to weep, but his eyes were too-dried and his insides loose enough to roll out of him.

If he began then he may pour of himself like a river outlet gurgling into the ocean; full of dead fish and seaweed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah...I have no concept of time.


End file.
